HYDERABAD: Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao is said to be considering a proposal to bear the Rs. 50 hike in the price of each domestic LPG cylinder that the Centre announced on March 1. The buzz in BRS circles is that the CM reviewed the issue with senior finance and civil supplies officials on Thursday.
If he approves the proposal, he would be replicating late Chief Minister Y.S. Rajashekar Reddy’s decision in 2008 to bear the Rs. 50 hike in the price of each LPG cylinder imposed by the then UPA government.
The Rajasekhar Reddy reimbursed oil marketing companies (OMCs) for the cylinders they had sold at the old rate. Congress leaders and cadre believe that this scheme helped in ensuring a second term for the Congress government in 2009.
The YSR scheme was in force until October 2012, when the OMCs started revising cylinder prices every month.
Party sources said that Chandrashekar Rao had obtained data on the number of domestic LPG connections in the state and the average usage to assess the financial burden of the proposal.
Officials reportedly said that Telangana has 1.16 crore domestic LPG connections, of which 68.74 lakh were single cylinder connections and 48 lakh double cylinder connections. This apart, there are 19.72 lakh Deepam connections, 11.46 lakh PM Ujjwala Yojana connections and 7.30 lakh connections distributed by OMCs under the CSR initiative.
Officials estimated that even if all the consumers order one cylinder every two months, they would require six cylinders in a year which would total 6.96 crore cylinders per year. The burden would be about Rs. 350 crore per year.
The feeling in BRS circles is that this would fetch a huge political mileage in the election year. The cylinder price which was Rs. 400 in 2013 has increased to nearly Rs. 1,200 in the nine years of the Narendra Modi government at the Centre, they said.
The state has 1.16 crore domestic LPG connections
These include 68.74 lakh single cylinder and 48 lakh double cylinder connections
19.72 lakh Deepam connections
11.46 lakh PM Ujjwala Yojana connections
7.3 lakh connections distributed by OMCs
Rs. 350 crore: Burden if all 1.16 crore consumers order one cylinder every two months
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