[orc]According to the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, there are a total of 16.38 crore active domestic LPG consumers in the country making it 612 active consumers for every 1000 households. South India has the most number of active consumers which is more than twice the number of active consumers in East India though the population of South is lower than that of East. Only 6.4% of the domestic LPG consumers gave up their subsidy across the country.
Subsidized Domestic LPG is one of the largest chunks of subsidy extended by the Government to the citizens. From 2011-12 to 2014-15, the Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) had an average under recovery of more than 38,148 crore rupees per annum. This is close to 2% of the India’s annual budget. OMCs had an under recovery of 29997 crore rupees in 2011-12. This increased to 46458 crore rupees in 2013-14. This is a jump of more than 50% in 2 years. The under recovery reduced to Rs 36580 crore in 2014-15. The subsidy on LPG is now limited to only 12 cylinders per annum per domestic consumer.
Number of Active Domestic LPG Consumers
As of January 2016, there are a total of 16.38 crore active domestic LPG consumers in the country. This is about 612 connections for every 1000 households. (based on number of estimated households as of 2016). South India has the highest number of active LPG consumers with 5.3 crore followed by North India (4.87crore), West India (3.52 crore) & East India (2.68 crore).
What about individual States?
Only 6 states have more than a crore active domestic LPG consumers with Uttar Pradesh topping the chart with 1.96 crore active consumers. It is worth noting that Maharashtra has more or less similar number of active consumers (1.94 crore) as Uttar Pradesh though its population is substantially less than that of UP. The other states with more than a crore connections include Andhra Pradesh (1.03 crore), Tamil Nadu (1.61 crore), West Bengal (1.08 crore) and Karnataka (1.04 crore). Three of the six states in this list are from South India. Lakshadweep with just 4000 active consumers has the least number of active consumers in the entire country.
Number of Domestic LPG Connections per 1000 Households
Absolute number of connections could sometimes be misleading because of the sheer variation in the population & number of households in various states. Hence it is important to compare normalized figures to understand the penetration & spread of LPG connections. The number of active domestic LPG consumers in each state has been normalized with the estimated number of households in that state as of 2016.
As expected, South India leads the pack with 823 active consumers for every 1000 households while East India stands last with only 383 active consumers for every 1000 households. In other words, South India has more than twice the number of active LPG consumers compared to East India for every 1000 households. The national average stands at 613. North & South India are above the national average while East & West are below the average.
What about States?
A total of 22 States/UTs have more active domestic LPG consumers for every 1000 households compared to the National Average. Five States/UTs have more than 1000 active consumers for every 1000 households. Goa leads the pack with 1281 active consumers for every 1000 households followed by Delhi (1278), Punjab (1049), Mizoram (1041) & Chandigarh (1031) in the top five. Though Uttar Pradesh has the highest number of active consumers in the country, it has only 541 active consumers for every 1000 households. Meghalaya is at the bottom with just 221 active consumers for every 1000 households followed by Jharkhand (268), Odisha (300), Chhattisgarh (302) & Bihar (306) in the bottom five.
Only 2.4% of the consumers in Andhra Pradesh gave up their LPG subsidy
As of January 2017, 1.05 crore LPG consumers have opted out of LPG subsidy. This is 6.4% of all the active LPG domestic consumers. Nagaland leads with 17.2% of the active LPG consumers opting out of subsidy. More than 10% of the active LPG consumers opted out of LPG subsidy in 6 different States/UTs. Four out of these six states are from the North-East. Andhra Pradesh is at the bottom of the list with only 2.4% of the consumers opting out of LPG subsidy. Less than 5% of the active consumers opted out of LPG subsidy in ten (10) States/UTs.
Featured Image: By Krish Dulal [CC BY-SA 3.0]
