The beneficiaries Pradham Mantri Ujjawala Yojana (PMUY) scheme–a free gas connection given to women from BPL family– have gone down by nearly 1.3 lakhs ever since the Covid-19 broke out in 2020, revealed a recent study conducted by the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell.

Interestingly during the same period, active domestic LPG connections increased by 124 lakhs, and non-domestic connections increased by more than 1.7 lakhs. This shows that the only gas connections given to BPL families have registered a decline whereas other domestic and non-domestic connections continued to increase

Though the real reason for the decrease in PMUY beneficiaries is not immediately known, officials in the Petroleum Ministry term it ‘nothing unusual’ and a normal practice where active and inactive PMUY beneficiaries keep changing.

PMUY is a unique scheme started in 2016 by the Modi government to give LPG connections to women living below the poverty line (BPL). It received an overwhelming response from the rural areas and by the end of 2020, nearly 801.6 lakh women got LPG connections under the scheme.

However, ever since the Covid-19 pandemic started, the total number of beneficiaries registered a decline. In 2020 PMUY beneficiaries were 1.2 lakh less than what it was in 2019. And this year, so far, the total number of beneficiaries have come down by 10,000, the study said.

The initial success of the PMUY could be judged from the fact that within a year of its launch 2 crore people availed of this scheme. In 2017, the total number of beneficiaries went up to 3.56 crore, 7.19 crore in 2018, and 8.016 crores in 2019, the PPAC study stated.

India presently has over 29.11 crore active LPG customers in the domestic category, which are being served by 25,116 LPG distributors. The LPG coverage of the country has reached its near highest level with around 99.8% LPG coverage.

Oil Marketing Companies have a total of 199 LPG bottling plants all over India with a rated bottling capacity of around 21.3 million metric tonnes per annum (MMTPA). According to a rough estimate, OMCs sold nearly 6.5 MMT of packed LPG in the first quarter of 2021.