Extent of Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) to improve in access to cleaner cooking fuels, especially in rural areas. Critical analysis.

LPG clean cooking fuel.

Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana(PMUY),under Nodal Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, is a scheme launched in 2016 by the government to provide 50 million LPG connections to women belonging to Below Poverty Line families and Backward Class families.

The scheme achieved to increase LPG connection base from 14% to 59% in 2019 as compared to before the start of the scheme. The main aim of the scheme is to provide clean cooking fuel to households and to lower the burden of drudgery among women. PMUY has proven to be among the biggest catalyst of economic growth for India.

As of 2021 the LPG coverage has went up to 97.4%. LPG’s infrastructure has expanded; including 8 crore poor families with the Dalit and tribal communities were provided with free cooking gas connections.

Despite a huge success of the scheme, it faces with the underlined challenges, lower consumption refills- i.e. sustained use of LPG and its refill rate. Various system anomalies like deficiencies in providing connections, problems in software of state-run-oil marketing companies, identifying of intended beneficiaries and inadequacies in deduplication process.

Way Forward: The scheme should be extended to poor households in urban and semi-urban slum areas. Need to achieve higher LPG coverage. Connecting Aadhaar number of all the families within the beneficiary list to prevent duplication process.