The Centre is confident that people with sufficient income will give up their LPG subsidy and is not considering making it mandatory for certain income groups, said Dharmendra Pradhan, Minister for State (Independent Charge) for Petroleum & Natural Gas, on Monday.

“Already more than 10 lakh people have given up the LPG subsidy. I am confident that more people will give it up and we will soon have one crore people in this category,” he said while speaking on the sidelines of a national seminar on bio-fuels.

The Minister also said that talks are on with the State Governments to identify the people who require kerosene subsidy in order to work out a plan similar to Direct Benefit Transfer of LPG.

Pradhan said that his Ministry is also working on a programme to increase CNG stations for providing clean fuel along key highways near the national capital region of Delhi.

“Delhi-Jaipur, Delhi-Chandigarh, Delhi-Haridwar and Delhi-Agra will be made into green corridors where CNG stations would increase. Similar pockets have been identified near Mumbai, Pune, Allahabad, Kanpur, Lucknow and Hyderabad,” he said.

During the seminar, the Minister urged the participants to chart out a way for promoting bio-fuels to bring down India’s dependency on crude oil imports.

“If we do 5 per cent bio-diesel blending it would require 3.5 million tonne bio-fuel but right now capacity is only at 1 million tonne per annum. It shows the kind of work that needs to be done,” said the Minister.

The Ministry has also constituted a working group to accelerate the use of bio-fuels. It would be headed by YB Ramakrishna, former Chairman of the Karnataka State Bio-Fuel Development Board.

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