Ahead of the relaunch of Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT) for LPG consumers, a meeting of LPG distributors and the representatives of oil companies was conducted at the Deputy Commissioner’s office in the city on Tuesday.

Presiding over the meeting, Senior Deputy Director of Food and Civil Supplies Department K Rameshwarappa, who mooted for a single window system, is learnt to have directed the oil companies to step up Information, Education and Communication (IEC) campaign to facilitate more number of consumers to avail the benefit. The oil companies - Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOC), Hindustan Petroleum (HP) and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) were told to clear confusions, if any, with regard to Forms 3 and 4 to avail the benefit by seeding the consumers’ Aadhaar numbers with their bank accounts.

In their replies, the representatives of oil companies apprised the officer about the status of LPG consumers, Aadhaar seeded bank accounts and bank readings. Of the total 5.82 lakh LPG consumers in the district, 5.44 lakh consumers have been Aadhaar enabled. IOC that has the major chunk of consumers in its fold (3.21 lakh) has 3.01 lakh consumers linked with Aadhaar, giving it 92 per cent success rate.

HPL has a total of 1.58 lakh consumers, among whom 1.50 lakh are linked with Aadhaar, and in the case of BPL, among a total of 99,000 consumers, 93,000 are linked with Aadhaar.
Manjunath of HPL who attended the meeting said that since all the complaints related to the process were addressed in the preliminary level, during the launch of the scheme earlier, the oil companies anticipated hurdle free process with the relaunch of the scheme.
The meeting was also attended by the representatives of 44 distributors in the district.