HPCL asks Airtel Payments Banks to refund wrongfully transferred subsidy

Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited has written to Airtel and sought a reversal of subsidy amounts that have been wrongfully credited to the Airtel Payment bank accounts.

A company statement said: “HPCL has requested that the subsidy amounts of consumers whose LPG subsidies have been wrongfully credited to Airtel Payment bank accounts be immediately transferred back to the customer’s earlier bank account or to the respective oil marketing companies.”

According to reports, ₹167 crore have been wrongfully credited to the Airtel Payment Bank interface through 31 lakh transactions.

The oil marketing companies and the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas have been getting a large number of complaints from consumers regarding non-credit of the LPG subsidy amounts into their earlier bank accounts for the past few weeks, the HPCL statement added.

Explaining the reason for the subsidy diversion, the HPCL statement said: “In many cases across the three public sector oil marketing companies (Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum and HPCL) where the Adhaar linking of LPG consumers has got changed in the NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) mapper to Airtel Bank and hence the LPG subsidy is getting sent to the new bank account in the Airtel Bank.”

In order to link LPG subsidy to earlier bank account, HPCL has written to Airtel Bank and requested that the subsidy amounts of these consumers be immediately either transferred back to the customer’s earlier bank account or to the respective OMC’s, the statement added.

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