'Compulsory Aadhar' rider lands many in trouble
Source: The Sangai Express
Imphal, June 15 2016:
In their efforts to prevent misuse of subsidised LPG refills, the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) has instructed all distributors to collect Aadhar numbers of all consumers, and this new initiative has landed many consumers in deep trouble.
The Government of India has entitled each consumer to 12 number of subsidised LPG refills in a year.
With a view to ensure availability of minimum annual requirements of LPG refills to all the consumers, IOC has taken up several of measures.
Detection and termination of multiple connec- tions is one such measure.
A source in IOC Imphal Divisional Retail Sales Office informed that making Aadhar numbers compulsory has turned out to be quite handy in detecting multiple connections.
Aadhar numbers of all the citizens are fed to a centralised computer database.
A such, when an Aadhar num-ber is submitted, all multiple LPG connections will be blocked in case the particular citizen has multiple connections.
For the State of Manipur, Aadhar seeding has been completed by 80 per cent.
It is suspected that majority of the remaining 20 per cent has multiple LPG connections as they are still reluctant to submit Aadhar numbers.
On the other hand, many LPG consumers who have multiple LPG connections have started surrendering their second and third connections whichever is the case.
If they do not submit their second or third connections, they are denied access to subsidised LPG refills.
However, it has not been decided regarding what type of action would be initiated against consumers who are refusing to submit Aadhar numbers and surrender their multiple connections.
Subsequent upon the IOC's new initiative, consumers have started surren- dering multiple connections while retaining only one.
But surrendering multiple connections has turned out to be big headache for a large number of consumers.
Whereas official records say that they took one/two cylinder(s) each at the time of registering LPG connections, they did not take cylinders in reality.
According to IOC's rules, a consumer who is surrendering multiple connections should also surrender the exact number of cylinders he/she took at the time of registering new connections.
However, there are many consumers in Manipur who took only the LPG connection documents without taking cylinders and other equipment.
Nonetheless, official records claimed they took one or two cylinder(s).
This was a serious mistake on the part of the LPG distributors as well as the consumers.
These faulty official records have landed many consumers who had multiple connections in big trouble as they have to surrender the exact number of cylinders which they did not take at all although official records say otherwise.
Meanwhile, Aadhar numbers of spouses have been made compulsory while submitting KYC forms by LPG consumers.
This has prevented seeking new connection in the names of spouses, added the source.