Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana was launched by the Prime Minister Ballia, Uttar Pradesh. The initiative, in line with the dream of the Prime Minister of creating smoke-less villages across the country, has come as a moment of pride for the women in BPL- households for getting LPG connection as an identity of their own and to lead a smoke-free, less polluted, convenient and healthy life.
To carry the scheme forward and implement it on mass level, special Ujjwala Melas for distributing LPG connections to identified beneficiaries under PMUY have been organised at all the LPG distribution outlets.
The main mantra of this scheme is Swacch Indhan, Behtar Jeevan – Mahilaon ko mila samman.
On the national level, 5 crore LPG connections will be provided in the next 3 years to eligible BPL households.
The scheme provides a financial support of Rs. 1600 for each LPG connection to the eligible BPL households.
The connections under the scheme will be given in the name of women-head of the households.
The OMCs will provide EMI facility for meeting the cost of stove and the first refill.
The scheme is aimed at replacing the unclean cooking fuels used in the most underprivileged households with clean and more efficient LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas).
Ensuring women’s empowerment, especially in rural India, the connections will be issued in the name of women of the BPL households.
The identification of eligible BPL families will be made on Social-Economic Caste Census (SECC) data that is being provided by the Union Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.
The scheme is implemented using the money saved in LPG subsidy through the ‘Give-it-Up’ campaign.
This is for the first time that the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas has launched such an enormous scheme.
PMUY aims at empowering the women and protect their health by reducing the serious health hazards associated with the cooking based on fossil fuel. The other aims of this scheme are to reduce the number of deaths resulted by the use of unclean cooking fuel and preventing toddlers from acute respiratory illness caused due to indoor air pollution caused by the unclean cooking fuel.
Indian is home to more than 24 crore households out of which about 10 crores are still deprived of LPG as cooking fuel and have to rely on firewood, coal, dung – cakes etc. as primary source of cooking.
