India Inc Goes Modi Way: Asks Employees To Give Up LPG Subsidy

BENGALURU: A glance of ‘Good Days’ is visible under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His campaign, appealing the Indian INC leaders and their employees to surrender cooking gas subsidies to benefit poor families, is trending high. Indian corporate leaders like Anand Mahindra, Anil Agarwal, Gautam Adani, Sajjan Jindal, Uday Kotak Kishore Biyani and many other rallied for the cause and themselves surrendered the LPG subsidy, reports TOI.

It has been reported Tata Group and Reliance Industries have asked their employees to surrender their subsidies so that some needy people could get the benefit. Till date almost 3.2 lakh LPG consumers surrendered their subsidized gas connections and it is expected that this number will reach to 1 crore.

Anand Mahindra, chairman of Mahindra Group while appealing his employees said, “In line with our Prime Minister's call to the citizens of India, I appeal to all employees of the Mahindra Group, who can afford to buy LPG at market prices, to do so and forgo the LPG subsidy.”

Kumar Mangalam Birla, the chairman of Aditya Birla Group is expected to request his employees to join the 'GiveItUp' campaign as and when he returns from his overseas trip.

Anil Agarwal, chairman of Vedanta Group said, “We have always aligned with the national cause that will enable the much needed funds to reach more households of the needy. The 'Opt out of LPG Subsidy' scheme has our whole-hearted support, and we have encouraged the members of the Vedanta family to help achieve the target of 1 crore people giving up LPG subsidies by the end of the financial year.”

While delivering his speech at Urja Sangam held in New Delhi, this initiative has saved up to 100 crore so far.

However, all the business houses didn’t ask their employees to give up the LPG subsidy. One of the leading industrialist said, “I have never claimed any LPG subsidy. But the idea of asking employees to give up LPG subsidy is like forcing them to do so. I am a citizen of India and so are they. Employees can voluntarily give up subsidy if they want to but I won't ask them to.”

In 2013-14 the subsidy burden on Indian Govt. was more than 40, 000 crore, but as per 2015-16 budget the petroleum subsidy has been halved to 30,000 crore and that for LPG has been estimated as 22, 000. The plan is to give the surrendered subsidy to a new customer which will reduce govt.’s subsidy bill. These finances will reach the poor needy households.

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