Bhopal: Amid the severe LPG supply crunch due to the West Asia conflict, leading to long queues, panic buying, hoarding, and soaring black market rates, responses to an RTI query by the country's three major oil marketing companies have revealed a stark paradox. Over 5.56 crore Indian households either took no LPG refill or just one refill during the entire fiscal year 2025-26.
Key Findings from RTI Data
The data, accessed by RTI activist Chandra Shekhar Gaur from Neemuch, Madhya Pradesh, shows that out of nearly 33.95 crore combined LPG consumers of Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL), and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL), as many as 3.30 crore did not book even a single cylinder refill during the fiscal. Another 2.26 crore consumers took just one refill in the entire financial year, meaning nearly every sixth LPG consumer household in the country either did not use LPG at all or used it only sparingly.
Impact Across Consumer Categories
The figures cut across both Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) beneficiaries and regular consumers, indicating that the pattern is no longer confined to poor households alone. According to the replies by the three oil marketing majors, IOCL alone reported nearly 2.03 crore consumers taking either zero or one refill, while BPCL reported around 1.25 crore such consumers and HPCL another 1.26 crore.
Ujjwala Yojana Under Pressure
Under PMUY, launched to promote clean cooking fuel among economically weaker households, the trend appears particularly worrying. Even among non-PMUY consumers, the numbers remain strikingly high, suggesting affordability pressures may be pushing families away from regular LPG usage despite widespread access.
Activist's Concerns
“The figures are despite many state governments subsidizing cooking gas prices for Ujjwala consumers. And the numbers of non-Ujjwala consumers, who either did not take an LPG refill or just one in the entire financial year, are also very high,” Gaur said. “Overall, more than 5.5 crore households either took only one cylinder or did not take even one in an entire financial year. This clearly reflects the impact of inflation on normal households. The government should intervene with measures so that maximum households use LPG for cooking, which was the objective behind the ambitious Ujjwala Yojana,” the activist told TOI.
