Sribala Vadlapatla, TNN Nov 5, 2013, 04.08AM IST
HYDERABAD: The Supreme Court ruling that Aadhaar card cannot be made mandatory for people to get subsidy under the Direct Benefit Transfer for LPG consumer (DBTL) scheme is unlikely to provide relief as the ministry of petroleum and natural gas is planning to continue direct linkage of LPG connections with bank accounts, according to senior ministry officials.
Under the DBTL scheme, a consumer gets LPG cylinders at market price and the subsidy is transferred to the linked bank account for nine subsidised cylinders in a year. Consumers were also asked to link their Aadhaar cards to avail the subsidy. One of the major problems with the system was that many consumers were still to get their Aadhaar numbers. The apex court ruling proved a welcome step for them. However, with the petroleum ministry planning to continue the bank-LPG linkage, consumers would be forced to put up with the host of other problems plaguing the scheme.
Several consumers have failed to get the subsidy even after linking their Aadhaar numbers with the bank and gas dealer. "I linked my Aadhaar to my LPG connection in August before the scheme came into force. However, this has been of no use as no subsidy has been transferred for the three cylinders that I purchased," said P Sunita, a techie.
People are being made to pay the market price of Rs 1,096 per cylinder but many are not getting the money back as was promised. "The scheme is not of much use. They should directly sell the cylinders at the subsidised rate," said V Vishuvardhan Rao, a consumer.
Some consumers also pointed out that it is difficult to even check the status of the subsidy on the common portal of the three gas companies. "Sometimes, the portal does not show proper data," said S Raja Reddy, another consumer.
Meanwhile, officials said there was a delay in interlinking the bank accounts with the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI), which acts as the interface for transactions between various banks for LPG subsidy.
"The banks are taking more time than required to map the accounts of the customers to NPCI," official sources said.
"The subsidy pattern may be continued as it is easy to gather the consumer's bank details form gas agency," said a ministry official.