Food and Civil Supplies Minister Shobha Karandlaje on Monday said that of the 71 lakh gas connections in the State, 20 lakh were suspected to be bogus, and they would be cancelled after the formalities were completed.
She told presspersons here that the verification of RR numbers of LPG consumers by the department was coming to an end and 20 lakh gas connections, belonging to both the APL and BPL categories, were bogus. She said cylinders were being sold illegally for commercial use by gas agencies in collusion with some unscrupulous elements in oil companies as well as the State and Union governments.
The Centre was giving a subsidy of Rs. 365 a cylinder for domestic use and was losing thousands of crores on account of bogus gas connections, and Karnataka was the first State to take steps to stop this drain on the exchequer.
Interestingly, many information technology and biotechnology professionals, numbering around five lakh in the State, are said to be using bogus gas cylinders because the Government had failed to supply them with gas connections.
Issue escalated
Ms. Karandlaje said she had raised the issue with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and the oil companies were aghast at the enormity of the illegal trade in gas cylinders and hoped that the Centre would take steps to punish the guilty.
She appealed to Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa to continue the ban on use of endosulfan in the State. She said that people in many States, including West Bengal, Orissa, Punjab and Haryana, had been affected by the chemical used under different names. She expressed displeasure over the open support extended to endosulfan manufacturers by Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar. The Minister said that the demand for power came down to 160 million units on Sunday following rain in the past four days.
Accusing the Centre of diverting power to those States going to the polls, she said that it was giving excuses such as breakdown at the Ramagundam plant for not supplying power from the central grid.
She said that the Centre imposed a fine on States for overdrawing power and the rule should apply to it as well.
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