Nearly 80 per cent of Indian households now have access to clean cooking gas , a big jump from 56 per cent three years ago, as state-run oil firms are enrolling new customers at a record pace to meet the target set by the Modi government.These firms added as many as seven crore LPG customers between April 2015 and December 2017, expanding the active customer base by about 50 per cent, an unheard-of rate in the past.The key driver of such expansion has been the government determination to wean all homes off hazardous traditional cooking fuel such as firewood and coal.Prodded by petroleum and natural gas minister Dharmendra Pradhan, staterun oil firms have worked on a war footing to induce demand for fresh connections through a mix of actively reaching out to potential customers, simplifying subscription process and using official subsidy scheme to tap poor households.The government had set a target for oil firms to enrol three crore new customers in 2016-17, another three crore in 2017-18 and four crore in 2018-19. Companies are close to achieving the targets for the first two years. About 2.27 crore new customers were added between April and December 2017, with backward states of West Bengal (29 lakh), Bihar (26.36 lakh) and Uttar Pradesh (26.32 lakh) receiving maximum fresh connections.At the beginning of 2018, the cooking gas coverage reached 79.2 per cent of the country’s households, with states in the south (94 per cent) and north (89 per cent) faring better than the national average while those in the west (73 per cent), east (62 per cent) and northeast (57 per cent) averaging lower.Goa (137 per cent), Delhi (126 per cent) and Punjab (123 per cent) are the top three states in terms of cooking gas coverage – the numbers being above 100 as they are based on the 2011 census data, since when the population has risen in these places as well as the rest of the country.Jharkhand (44 per cent), Odisha (51.5 per cent), Bihar (56 per cent) and Chhattisgarh (57 per cent) figure among states with the lowest coverage. With massive addition of customers in recent years, cooking gas penetration in West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh has risen to 78.5 per cent.One reason southern states have fared better is due to years of incentives by state governments of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Tamil Nadu to poor households for cooking gas subscription. A few other states too offer subsidy to new subscribers.About 1.17 crore poor households have benefited from such subsidy schemes in different states. About 70 lakh connections to poor families have also been released in the past with support from the corporate social responsibility fund of state-run oil companies Under the central government’s Ujjwala scheme, launched in May 2016, 3.2 crore fresh connections have been issued to poor families till December 2017.