Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) - UPSC Notes

The Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) is a government scheme launched in 2016 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The scheme originally envisaged the distribution of 50 million LPG connections to women below the poverty line. Later, it aimed to provide LPG connections to eight crore women by March 2020. However, this target was achieved seven months prior, in September 2019.

Latest Update about PMUY – The Finance Minister of India, Nirmala Sitharaman through the Union Budget 2021 has announced to extend the benefits under PM Ujjwala Yojana to one additional crore beneficiaries. 

Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana Quick Facts:

The Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana is an important topic for the IAS Exam. Candidates can also download the PDF notes at the end of this article.

Benefits of Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana

The unclean cooking fuel causes deaths which are mostly due to non-communicable diseases including heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lung cancer. Providing LPG connections to families below the poverty line ensures universal coverage of cooking gas in the country. The scheme can be a tool for women empowerment in that LPG connections and clean cooking fuel can reduce cooking time and effort, and in most of India, cooking is a responsibility shouldered solely by women. The scheme also employs the rural youth in the supply chain of cooking gas.

A relief package worth Rs 1.70 lakh crore was also announced by the government to tackle the financial difficulties arising from the Covid-19 outbreak under the PM Garib Kalyan Scheme.

To know more about PM Garib Kalyan Yojana, refer to the linked page.

Some of the major benefits provided by Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana are:

• It provides five crore LPG connections to families below the poverty line.
• Financial support of Rs 1600 is provided by the scheme for each LPG connection for BPL households. The administrative cost of this support is borne by the Government. This subsidy is meant for the security fee for the cylinder, pressure regulator, booklet, safety hose, and other fitting charges.
• Under the scheme, oil marketing companies also provide interest-free loans for refilling and purchasing stoves.
• The Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana covers all the BPL families that come under all forms of distributorship and distributes various sizes of cylinders (14.2 kg, 5 kg, etc.) as per the field situation.
• The benefits of this scheme are also available for the people of all Hilly States including the NE States (who are treated as ‘Priority States’).
• The scheme effectively addresses several difficulties faced by the people in the States of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, and Tripura in accessing LPG for cooking purposes.

Objectives of Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana

The Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana was launched for providing clean fuel to women below the poverty line. The use of unclean cooking fuel is harmful to human health. The aims of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana are given below:

• To empower women and protect their health.
• To minimize health issues arising from the use of unclean fossil fuel and other fuel while cooking.
• To control indoor pollution from the use of fossil fuel which causes respiratory issues.
• To prevent degradation of the purity of the environment that is compromised by widespread usage of unclean cooking fuel.

Eligibility for Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana

Any applicant who fulfils the below-mentioned criteria is eligible to apply for the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana:

• The applicant must be a woman aged above 18 years. She must also be a citizen of India.
• She should belong to a family below the poverty line and no one else from the household should own an LPG connection.
• The overall monthly income of the family should not exceed a certain limit that is prescribed by the UT/State Governments.
• The applicant’s name should be in the list of SECC-2011 and should also match with the information provided in the BPL database of the oil marketing companies.
• The applicant should not be registered under any other similar scheme provided by the government.

Apart from the above, the applicant should also submit a set of documents indicating her BPL status, identity, etc.

Read about government to government initiatives (G2G) in the linked article.

WHO & Household Air Pollution

There a few important facts that are mentioned by the World Health Organization (WHO) that mentions the impact of unclean cooking. These facts can be used by the aspirants to support the need for schemes like PM Ujjwala Yojana:

1. Around 300 crores people cook using open fires simple stoves that use kerosene, biomass (wood, animal dung and crop waste) and coal.
2. Around 40 lakh people die prematurely every year from illness that is attributed to household air pollution. One of the causes of household air pollution is inefficient cooking practices using polluting stoves paired with solid fuels and kerosene.
3. Particulate Matter (PM) found in household air pollution is the cause of half of the deaths due to pneumonia among children under 5 years.

WHO mentions the impact of household air pollution that is caused by unclean cooking fuel, on health. It mentions that of 3.8 million deaths due to this pollution:

1. 27 percent of deaths are due to pneumonia.
2.  18 percent of deaths are due to stroke.
3. 27 percent of deaths are from ischaemic heart disease
4. 20 percent of deaths are from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
5. 8 percent of deaths are from lung cancer.

WHO also mentions the total number of people having access to clean fuel is expected to remain unchanged by 2030 leading to obstructing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves and the Climate Clean Air Coalition is an international initiative supported by WHO to improve air pollution and related health impacts.

Candidates should follow the latest developments in Current Affairs related to other government schemes for their UPSC 2023 preparation.

Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana:- Download PDF Here

Multiple Choice Question

Consider the following statements

1. The Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana covers all the BPL families that come under all forms of distributorship and distributes various sizes of cylinders (14.2 kg, 5 kg, etc.) as per the field situation.
2. Pradhan Mantri Kisan Maan-Dhan Yojana (PM-KMY) Central Sector Scheme which is administered by the Cooperation & Farmers Welfare, Department of Agriculture, Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare, and the Government of India in partnership with Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC).
3. PM Kisan SAMPADA scheme comes under the Ministry of Food Processing & Industries. SAMPADA aims at plugging gaps in the supply chain, modernization/ expansion of existing food processing units, creation of processing and preservation capacities, etc. It is an all-inclusive package to give a renewed thrust to the food processing sector in India.
4. Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) aims at providing support for the sustainable production of yield in the agricultural sector. PMFBY is to achieve this by providing financial support to farmers in distress due to loss and damage to crops caused by unexpected calamities.

Choose the correct answer from the below-given options

A) None of the above statements are true.

B) Only statements 1 and 4 are true.

C) Only statements 2 and 3 are true.

D) All the above-given statements are true.

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