Purnima Hazra on Thursday voiced before a Union minister a concern plaguing countless Indian homes for months on end: “Sir, I want to tell you that the price of a cylinder should be reduced soon.”
The homemaker from Santiniketan was referring to the steady rise in the price of cooking gas or LPG over the past one year, during which the price of a 14.2kg cylinder has risen by around Rs 250 or 30 per cent.
Facing Purnima at the other end was Rameswar Teli, junior petroleum and natural gas minister, whom she later described in a well-meaning way as “gas minister”.
“Sir, the price of a gas cylinder is increasing every month. People are taking the Ujjwala gas connection, but they are staying away from using a gas cylinder and using coal or firewood to cook food. It has risen very high in the past few months. I am telling you this for the sake of the common people,” Purnima, in her early forties and a resident of Gurupally in Santiniketan, told Teli.
The audience burst into applause.
The Union minister was in Birbhum on Friday to attend a programme for the distribution of LPG connections under the Ujjwala Yojana of the Centre. A group of women who had earlier received the connection under the scheme had been invited to the Gitanjali auditorium in Bolpur. Purnima, who occasionally works as a make-up artist and is known as a BJP supporter, was one of them.
Sources said the programme was organised to celebrate the success of the Ujjwala Yojana, launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2016 with the aim of giving 50 million LPG connections to women from poor families.
On Friday, a person sitting beside Teli explained the question to him, which prompted him to confirm the name of the woman more than once before he made an attempt to address the issue.
“What is your name? It is Purnima Hazra, right? Purnima, I’m telling you the reason,” the minister said.
“Actually, the price of petroleum and gas is increasing in the international market…. We also want the price of fuel and gas not to increase like this,” the minister explained.
Later, questioned by reporters, the minister said: “I have already answered this question inside…. Once the price of petroleum goods and gas increases in the international market, we have to increase it accordingly. The officials of three companies selling the petroleum goods are present here and you may also ask the question to them. Once the price rises in the international market, the three companies sit at a meeting and take a decision to increase the price.”
Domestic LPG prices are influenced by crude oil prices in international markets. The government has contended that the recent increases were necessitated by “under-recovery” on LPG, which means the retail selling price was lower than the purchase price of crude oil.
While it is true that Russia’s war on Ukraine has affected international crude oil prices, there have been phases when international crude oil prices remained soft but the benefits were not passed on to the consumers.
Purnima later recounted: “Since the gas minister (Teli) had come here to meet us, I thought it was the right time to tell him the real problems. It’s a fact that the price of a cylinder is increasing every month and we can’t afford it. The main problem for women is the increasing price of a gas cylinder.”
Purnima has been seen at various programmes of the BJP, but she said she had spoken as a common citizen burdened by the high price. “I like the schemes of the Narendra Modi government. But I will not make any political comment as I am a common citizen,” she said.
