NEW DELHI: Cooking gas
dealers will no longer be able to enroll new customers as the
government has centralised the process and asked the state firms to
approve fresh applications after verifying that the applicant does not
have multiple connections from different agencies.
"Customers can submit
applications for a new connection to a local distributor with valid
documents but it will only be processed and approved by oil companies
after verification to ensure de-duplications," a senior oil ministry
official said. The entire process should take a week to 10 days, the
official added. Customers can also directly apply online through
companies' websites.
Earlier, gas distributors were
issued new connections after verifying customers' details. But that
encouraged users to take multiple connections by approaching different
agencies, which did not have tools to check duplication, the official
said.
Indian Oil, Hindustan petroleum
and Bharat Petroleum have already found more than 1 crore duplicate
connections and have blocked them. "In some case, one household has
connections of all three agencies. They have been caught after online
system is implemented," the official added. The three companies
distribute cooking gas through Indane, HP Gas and Bharatgas brands.
Companies' executives say that
they have issued notices to customers having duplicate connections and
ask them to surrender them. "In case several connections are issued
under the name and address of a particular consumer, he can submit a
KYC, or know your customer, form that will verify his identity. Other
connections taken fraudulently would be terminated," an IOC executive said.
The concept of KYC is borrowed from banks to verify identity of account holders.
Direct subsidy for cooking gas
was proposed by Nandan Nilekani-led task force that suggested a
three-phase action plan to cut burgeoning fuel subsidy. The first phase is to cap consumption of subsidised cylinders, followed by direct transfer of subsidies to bank accounts of users.
Source : The Economic Times, Sept 5, 2012
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