The Indian government's think tank Niti Aayog is working on a proposal to replace the LPG subsidy with a cooking subsidy in order to extend the benefits to people using piped natural gas and biofuels for cooking purposes said a top official to PTI in an interview.

Niti Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar on Sunday said in an interview with PTI that the move was to extend the subsidy to all fuels that are used for cooking as the current practice is unfair to some cities that use PNG (Piped Natural Gas). At present, a subsidy is given to users of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG).

There have also been apprehensions lately that the subsidy provided only for LPG users is inhibiting the adoption of clean and cheap fuels such as biofuels in rural areas and PNG in urban areas.

These changes pertaining to cooking subsidy are likely to be incorporated in the draft National Energy Policy 2030, which was made public last year. The policy would be taken up by the Cabinet after inter-ministerial consultations.

Although LPG consumers have to buy the fuel at market price, they receive government subsidy on 12 cylinders of 14.2 kilograms each per household in a year through direct transfer of the amount to the users' bank accounts.

Inputs from PTI