Giving a push to the government’s move to boost domestic Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) consumption, the public sector oil marketing companies (OMCs) are planning to set up nearly 6,500 new distribution centres.

Under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, the government aims to release of 5 crore subsidised new LPG connections to women of below poverty line families, largely in rural backdrops, till fiscal 2018-2019. During fiscal 2016-2017, OMCs released 3.25 crore new LPG connections. Of these, two crore were released under PMUY.

This spurt in the number of connections is going to strain the existing 18,500 LPG distribution outlets in the country. With the addition of 6,500 new LPG distribution centres, the total number of centres in the country will reach 25,000.

“The aim is to have one distribution centre per 10 km, this comes up to one centre per taluka,” a Ministry for Petroleum & Natural Gas official told BusinessLine .

According to the road map for increasing distributor penetration, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh will get 1,000 more centres each, West Bengal will get 650, the North Eastern Region will get nearly 200 new outlets, Maharashtra 400 new outlets, Kerala 80 new outlets, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana combined will get 200 new outlets, and Tamil Nadu will get 290 more centres,

The official said that the focus of the government is now to ensure home delivery of LPG cylinders in rural backdrops. The selection of locations for the new outlets is being done by the public sector OMCs while keeping in mind the existing network.

“State governments can also nominate locations for setting up these new outlets,” the official added.

The selection of LPG distributors is going to be conducted through an online lottery.

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