No sooner than the Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi pitched for an increase in the number of subsidised domestic LPG cylinders from nine per household annually to 12, the Congress-led UPA Government on Friday said that the Cabinet will consider the proposal at the earliest.

This is despite the fact that such a move will have some impact on the already stressed exchequer.

Gandhi, in his address at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) session here, pushed for raising the cap on domestic LPG cylinders. He referred to the Prime Minister and said nine subsidised cylinders were not enough, and the need is for 12. Later, the Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister M. Veerappa Moily said that a formal decision on this will be taken soon.

Cylinder cost A consumer in Delhi pays Rs 410.50 for each of the subsidised cylinder against the cost price of Rs 1,173.20. Currently, there are around 15 crore LPG connections. According to LPG dealers, around 90 per cent connection holders have exhausted their existing quota of nine subsidised cylinders annually. If the cap is raised to 12, around 95-97 per cent of the connections will get the benefit.On the subsidy outgo front, it would add about Rs 3,500 crore more annually to the existing Rs 42,000 crore annually on domestic LPG.

Higher growth At the session, the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, and the Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, in their address boasted of higher and inclusive growth during the 10-year regime of the UPA Government.

However, the Prime Minister conceded that growth had slowed down due to various international and domestic factors. The growth for the current fiscal is estimated at 5 per cent, lower than the earlier estimate of over 6 per cent.

“We agree that there are certain domestic reasons responsible for the slowdown in our growth rate. Infrastructure projects do not get expeditious clearances. Bureaucrats are hesitant to take decisions fearing that the Central Vigilance Commission and CAG will raise questions over their decisions,” he said. This remark was in reference to the questions raised by CAG over various decisions, including coal blocks allocation and 2G spectrum.

He rued that his Government was not getting the “credit it deserves” even though the country has seen the average growth of 7.9 per cent over the last nine years despite two bouts of global recession.

Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said that the last 10 years have been years of tremendous growth and development for India and the next 10 years will also be years of tremendous growth and development.

“People of India will once again entrust the responsibility to the Congress Party,” he claimed.

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