Bhubaneswar, March 13: Union Petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan Saturday assured that the list prepared by states on Ujjawala beneficiaries will be given utmost priority.
“Though the Centre has lists of BPL families in all States, we will ask each and every State for an updated BPL list before implementing the Ujjwala Scheme. Based on it, we will roll out the project,” Pradhan said here.
The minister’s statement came in the wake of media reports that the State government is undecided about the list for implementation of the scheme as it has two such lists.
As per a survey done in 1997, the State has around 45 lakh BPL families, whereas 58 lakh families in the State have been categorized under the ‘Deprived’ section in the Socio Economic and Caste Census conducted in 2011.
Notably, Panchayati Raj minister Arun Sahu had said on Friday that it would wait for the Centre’s guidelines on this.
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs has recently approved the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana – a scheme for providing free LPG connections to women in BPL families with an aim to provide five crore LPG connections to BPL households under the Scheme across the country in the next three years.
