COIMBATORE, December 29, 2011
V.S. PALANIAPPAN
People queue up to get their LPG gas cylinders for refill near a gas cylinder distribution godown at Sriperumbudur
Bringing an end to the anxiety of lakhs of LPG customers in Tamil Nadu, the petroleum corporations have told the distributors that the Aadhar card, that is, the National Identification Number (UID) of the Unique Identification Number Authority of India (UIDAI), was only one of the options of address proof and Aadhar was not being insisted upon.
The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas vide a gazette notification dated September 26, 2011 amended the Liquefied Petroleum Gas (Regulation of Supply and Distribution) order of 2000 making UID a must for availing LPG refills, where enrolment for Aadhaar cards have been notified.
The same was issued as a circular by the Ministry on October 13, 2011. This resulted in a big furore and people started thronging the UID enrolment centres.
In fact public response or participation in the process picked up momentum only then. “It was only a beginning and not completion of the process and under such circumstances making it mandatory would put the public into untold hardship”, said K. Kathirmathiyon, Secretary of Coimbatore Consumer Cause. The move to make Aadhaar was ill-timed, he said.
Meanwhile, the statement by the Union Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas R.P.N. Singh on November 30 clarified that Aadhaar was one of the options and the UIDAI officials clarified that Aadhaar was not a must and added that no directive was given to any Government agency to make Aadhaar a must.
Meanwhile uncertainty loomed large over the fate of UID bill when Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance on December 8 rejecting the bill on National Identification Authority of India (NIAI) in its current form. The committee cited the huge cost as well as national security and privacy. It also pointed out that the Aadhaar work will only lead to duplication of the National Population Registry (NPR) activities.
Enquiries with a number of distributors in Western Tamil Nadu region and sources in the LPG division of the three Public Sector Undertaking oil corporations revealed that the distributors have been sensitised to accept Aadhaar but not to insist upon it. Even otherwise, so far there had not been any complaint of distributors seeking Aadhar for releasing a new LPG connection or for providing refills.