In the LPG Subsidy Scheme which is proposed to start again, it is perfectly illogical to have consumers pay the full price and then await subsidy via the Aadhaar linkage into their bank accounts for the 12 subsidised cylinders in a year that are allowed.
This will unnecessarily stress the system with too many transactions and with glitches that have already been seen in transfers into the bank accounts of consumers in the past, the purpose of this procedure will be self-defeating. It is more sensible to track the number of subsidised cylinders availed by each consumer to see when he completes his quota. Apart from this, the philosophy in this procedure is wrong since you do not expect the common man to fund the gas companies or the government and then wait for the subsidy to come into his bank account. Sometimes because of errors the subsidy may not come at all or get delayed for months. Thus, is this some kind of a punishment to the consumers by the authorities just because they are favouring us with a subsidy.
Further, the gas distributors are calling consumers to come with their Aadhaar cards and re-register. This kind of situation will create another massive crowd as in the past at the distributor locations for registering the Aadhaar card. Therefore a certain amount of logic and sanity is requested to accept data that is available with them and move on.
Srinivas Kamat, Alto-Betim
