LPG subsidy in non-consumer's account
Source: The Sangai Express
Imphal, November 02 2015:
In a strange development, subsidy given to LPG refill went to the bank account of an individual who did not take any refill.
This mysterious case was discovered in the course of a random survey conducted by The Sangai Express on whether LPG consumers are getting their due shares of subsidized LPG refills in time.
The particular individual to whose bank account the subsidy amount was entered although he did not take any refill is a consumer of an LPG distributor located at Imphal.
The consumer, on condition of anonymity, said that he took only one subsidized LPG refill this year.
As expected, the subsidy amount given by the Government entered his bank account.
Although he did not take any refill after that, the subsidy amount was transferred to his bank account not once but twice.
The particular LPG distributor is among many distributors which have run into backlog for several months regarding distribution of subsidized LPG.
"The fact that the subsidy amount entered my account not once but twice indicated that there is a serious lapse either on the part of the IOC or the distributor", he said.
If any DBTL consumer does not take LPG refill for six months, he/she would be categorised as an inactive consumer.
Once categorised as inactive, the consumer would not be given any subsidized LPG refill.
If he/she wishes to re-avail the service of subsidized LPG refills, he/she should submit a fresh application together with KYC form stating the reasons for not taking subsidized LPG refills for an extended period of time.
The consumer would become an active consumer only after completion of this process.
It is rather strange that the particular consumer who have not taken any LPG refill for the last several months has not been put in the category of 'inactive'.
Instead subsidy amount was transferred to his account, not once but twice.
Some distributors maintained that insertion of validity dates while issuing notification about distribution of LPG refills in newspapers is wrong according to rules.
While some distributors still gave LPG refills to consumer even if their dates of bookings had crossed the validity dates, some distributors asked such consumers to book anew.
Asking consumers to book anew because their dates of booking have crossed the validity date is nothing but harassment of consumers.
Although the new initiative of DBTL is in the interest of consumers, many staff of several distributors were not given detailed awareness before the scheme was implemented.
As such, many staff are suspected to have been committing mistakes out of ignorance, said the person.