AGARTALA, May 15 (TIWN): Worried by the LPG crisis in Tripura, opposition leader Sudip Roy Barman today urged the Secretary of Ministry of Food and Public Distribution to take up all necessary steps to solve the problem without further delay.

 In a letter addressed to the Secretary today, Mr. Roy Barman stated at present LPG crisis is prevailing in Tripura and as a result the consumers are facing a lot of problems in getting LPG cylinders. At present there are approximately 45 gas distributors in the state which is having 3.40 lakh consumers. The state needs 204232 LPG cylinders (2900 MT) in each month.

“The IOC authority is not properly monitoring regularly the supply of LPG cylinders keeping in view of the actual demands of the state”, he mentioned in the letter.

He said it is fact the pipe line gas connection has been extended to a large number of houses in and around the Agartala city who are also having LPG connection and taking the advantage from both side and they don’t surrender their blue books.

Besides, there are huge number of fake consumers in each and every distributors and through these fake consumers the distributors are earning huge black money and also creating an artificial crisis of cooking gas, he said.

“There is an LPG bottling plant at Bishalgarh but the IOC authority is not paying any interest for upgradation of the capacity”, he said in the letter.

“In view of the facts, I would like to request you to take up the issue with the appropriate authority of the IOC so that the bottleneck condition of LPG distribution is solved without any further delay”, he added.