Finance Minister while announcing the budget 2021, declared the extension of Ujwala scheme which has benefited 8 lakh households and will now benefit 1 crore households.
Nirmala Sitharaman also announced in the session that under the targeted scheme a gas pipeline project will also be initiated in the state of Jammu & Kashmir.
The Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 1 May 2016 to distribute 50 million LPG connections to women of Below Poverty Line (BPL) families.
A budgetary allocation of ₹80 billion was made for the scheme. In the first year of its launch, the connections distributed were 22 million against the target of 15 million. The scheme led to an increase in LPG consumption by 56% in 2019 as compared to 2014.
At the 107th Indian Science Congress held in January 2020 in Bengalore, Narendra Modi declared that technology has helped India “in recognizing the 8 crore women who were still using coal or wood for cooking” and also “in understanding how many new distribution centres must be built, via the help of technology.”
