Story Dated: Thursday, November 14, 2013 19:24 hrs IST
|
|
|
|
Text Size
|
|
|
|
||||
|
|
|
Kottayam: It was in September, 2012, that the government issued an order to limit the number of subsidised cooking gas cylinders to nine per consumer per year. The introduction of DBT (Direct Benefit Transfer Scheme) called for the linking of consumers' Aadhaar number with their bank account and LPG consumer number. The move, made mandatory for obtaining the nine subsidised cylinders, also led to a lot of confusions and controversies.
First, it was the nitty gritties of obtaining the Aadhaar card that made life worse for the public. If that was not painful enough, the erroneous details featured in already-issued Aadhaar cards added more woes to the lives of the public as wrong names and distorted photos added to their burdens in everyday lives. Ever since the Aadhaar number was linked with bank accounts and the consumer number of gas customers, people went berserk with lot of queries and doubts. To add fuel to the grueling situation was the shortage of LPG supply and intermittent strikes at re-filling plants.
While customers were left in the thick of the painful wait for the LPG cylinders, the oil companies fixed December 1 as the deadline for linking Adhaar, consumer ID and bank account for receiving gas subsidies. In the tug-of-war between gas agencies and consumers, it always the ordinary customers who end up at the receiving end.
People have so many doubts regarding Aadhaar linking because it a three-way process,·says a major Indane distributor in Kottayam, o avail the subsidy on LPG cylinders, a consumer has to be a Cash Transfer Compliant (CTC) customer. For that, the consumer number, the Aadhar number and the bank account have to be linked. A mistake at any one stage while filing the information can hinder the linking process and stop a customer from becoming a CTC, which may ultimately prevent the subsidy from being transferred to his or her account.
There are also other confusions- filing of more than one bank account for the CTC process is just one among them. “Usually people have more than two bank accounts and if a customer files all of them, or more than one, the system that registers information will pick up the last account that was provided. The customer who checks for subsidy in the first account will never find it,” the distributor continued.
But for Mary, a resident in Kottayam, it the elusive Aadhaar number that is worrying her. had applied for the Aadhaar card very early. I had furnished all the necessary documents and my photograph was also taken. But the processing of Aadhaar card somehow got haywire. On inquiring, I was informed that some office in Bangalore that was handling the documents had failed to get it right. Anyways, I applied for the second time, and those who applied along with me, and even after me, got the Aadhaar number. I am still waiting for it. Now I will not be getting the subsidy for no fault of mine. Now who I am I to approach to get my issue addressed?·She asks.
There are several others, who are running helter skelter to get their Aadhaar number connected with their bank account and consumer number.
The agonising factor, above all, is the non-availability of the LPG cylinders on time. Again, the distributor has another answer, “For a customer it’s just his matter alone- once his cylinder is delivered, his worry is over. But for us, it a daily issue. When a truck load of cylinders sets off for the day, it is supposed to deliver at ninety to hundred households a day. What happens quite often is that when the staff lands at the door step with the cylinder, there will be none answering the door bell. So we again face the problem of stocking back the returned cylinders.”
It can be a reasonable explanation but not enough to pacify the common people who have been suffering neglect and indifference on the part of the distributors. “It’s their pastime. They draw some sort of pleasure by seeing people in distress,” says Babu, a grocer, “even after one-and-a-half months after booking the cylinder, they say that there is no cylinder available. Very rarely do they pick up the phone and when they do, they ask us to present ourselves in person the next day. When we go there the next day, they plainly say that there is no cylinder available and ask us to come the next day after inquiring about the availability over phone. Then again we call them the next day and again the phone is busy for ever. This is their game. Of course, if you’re influential, you’ve nothing to worry,” fumes Babu.
However, there are also some who have never had a problem with the Aadhaar or its linking with the LGP connections and the bank account. Dr. Vijayan, residing in a small town some fifty kilometers away from Kottayam, says, “I never faced any problem with the gas cylinder delivery or becoming a CTC.” Interestingly, he has not yet received the subsidy in his bank.
Meanwhile, Kottayam District Collector of Ajith Kumar, IAS, is confident that the DBT scheme over LPG can be fully implemented within the stipulated time. “As per records all residents in the district will be registered for Aadhaar very soon and as far as seeding of LPG consumers with Aadhar is concerned, we hope it would be implemented with out much hassles.”
The LPG distributors in the district have already been instructed to provide the information and other notices regularly through the media about the situation, the Collector said.
The DBT scheme is being implemented in the LPG distribution domain to ensure that the rightful person get the subsidy and black marketing is kept at bay.
Though the Supreme Court had ruled that Aadhar is not mandatory for getting the subsidy, the Collector said that the district is preparing itself should such a norm be introduced in the near future.
A major Indane distributor also believes that the government will sooner or later make it mandatory at least through ordinance and then put it for voting. He also forecasts that when the public gets used to the pricing of the LPG cylinder, the subsidy too may vanish.
It remains to be seen how the impending hardships of the people regarding the issue is going to be addressed by the government.
