Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan will inaugurate one of the ambitious programmes of the Centre — LPG Panchayat, aimed at encouraging rural communities to turn to clean fuel.
The Centre plans to organise one lakh LPG Panchayats across the country, where discussions will take place between officials of fuel companies and villagers on awareness and uses of the LPG.
The first LPG Panchayat will be held in Gandhinagar, where Pradhan will preside over the interaction between women using LPG under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjawala Yojana (PMUY) and the companies.
LPG Panchayats will bring together about 100 LPG users of an area and create an interactive platform to discuss safe and sustainable usage of LPG, its benefits and linkages between using clean fuel and empowering women, said Sanjiv Jain, state coordinator of oil marketing companies.
According to data shared by the oil marketing companies, so far three crore connections have been allotted under the PMUY against the target of five crore by 2019.