Kolkata: Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan today said time has come for the government to think on income bracket for consumers to avail LPG subsidy. “The finance minister asked me whether time has come to think of any income brackets for consumers to avail of LPG subsidies and I told him there is a need to think on this,” Pradhan told reporters on the sidelines of a CII seminar here. Urging consumers to give up subsidy on LPG, he said from the time of implementation of Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT), the government has been able to save Rs 15,000 crore in the last fiscal.
Pradhan said three crore duplicate LPG connections were terminated, which had led to this savings. The minister also said the government was planning to include kerosene in line with LPG for targetting the subsidies effectively.
He said voluntary surrender of LPG subsidies was the lowest in the East, while the figure for Kolkata was less than one lakh as against the national total of 46 lakh.
