The whole procedure boils down to be a poll gimmick where the taxpayers’ money goes to oil companies and the burden on the next government increases. Also, the deserving still remain out of the arena because the Aadhaar-link is snapped. So who is going to be benefited by Rahul’s wish and Moily’s compliance?
Nobody has seen such promptness in Congress for the past 10 years it has been governing the country. It took one angry Rahul Gandhi speech to put everyone on its toe. Within 24 hours of his possibly-red-bull-fuelled AICC speech, where he demanded 12 LPG cylinders from the government, petroleum minister Veerappa Moily was seen making a U-turn on his statement.
Moily had stated that 89.2 per cent of the 15 crore LPG consumers use up to nine cylinders in a year and only 10 per cent have to buy the additional requirement at the market price. Also, he had added that increasing the limit to 12 would result in an additional fuel subsidy burden of Rs 3,300 crore-5,800 crore for the government.
But the reformist move that Moily had made few months ago was quashed by the words of his dear Rahulji in a minute and a proposal was moved for the consideration of Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs and Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs.
Granting Rahul’s wish within a week, the CCPA, headed by P Chidambaram raised the annual cap but the number of cylinder has been restricted to one per month. If we have to believe the reports, this will be soon done away with too as Moily has apparently told prime minister Manmohan Singh that the restriction will result in rationing.
Now the petroleum ministry will go back to paying subsidy to oil companies as was the practice before and consumer will get subsidised cooking gas from them. The hike will result in an additional fuel subsidy burden of Rs 5,000 crore. The government already incurs about Rs 46,000 crore per annum as LPG subsidy.
The move not only increases the subsidy burden on the government, it also harms a scheme which Rahul touted as ‘game changer’ – the Aadhaar scheme. The government has put on hold the direct benefit transfer for LPG (DBTL) under which consumers in 289 districts in 18 states got cash of Rs 435 in their bank accounts so that they could buy cooking gas at market rate.
This will reduce the problems of those consumers who did not have Aadhaar card or an Aadhaar-linked bank account. But, in the words of RBI chief Raghuram Rajan, it will indeed be a “misdirected subsidy” where most of the benefit will go do undeserving households.
The whole procedure boils down to be a poll gimmick where the taxpayers’ money goes to oil companies and the burden on the next government increases. Also, the deserving still remain out of the arena because the Aadhaar-link is snapped. So who is going to be benefited by Rahul’s wish and Moily’s compliance?
