A father and son living under the same roof and sharing the same kitchen will be treated as a single household, eligible for a single domestic LPG connection only.
The recent decision of public sector oil marketing companies (OMCs) to weed out multiple cooking gas connections has raised questions on how households will be defined. Besides, a single connection anyway provides for two cylinders (14.2 kg each).
Clarifying the issue, an oil company executive said that the companies were not making a distinction between whether it is a joint or a nuclear family.
“It is based on residential address and one home-one customer-one connection (two cylinders) concept,” the official said.
Starting September 14, the three OMCs – Indian Oil Corporation, Bharat Petroleum Corporation, and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation – have intensified their efforts to do away with multi-connection owners and have asked consumers to surrender all additional connections and retain only one double cylinder connection per household.
Consumers who do not comply with the directive by October 31 will face blocking of all connections. Asked how many had surrendered their multi-connections till now, sources said a clear picture would emerge by October 25.
There are almost 10-15 per cent of the 14 crore cooking gas connections in the country that fall into this category.
On the retail selling price of the 14.2-kg non-subsidised domestic LPG cylinder, which was increased from October 1, the official said, “Any decrease in the price of LPG in the international market would similarly be passed on to the consumers by way of reduction in the domestic prices of non-subsidised domestic LPG cylinders supplied to households during the monthly review.”
However, the price of subsidised LPG remains the same. At Delhi, the subsidised cylinders are available at Rs 399 per cylinder.