NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Friday that his government aims to provide piped cooking gas connection, which currently serves 27 lakh households, to one crore households in the next four years.

The Prime Minister also appealed to people to join the movement to voluntarily give up their LPG subsidy .

"People who can afford buying LPG at market rates should give up subsidy on cooking gas," the PM said.

The PM added that this is already happening and "over 2.8 lakh consumers have surrendered LPG subsidy, resulting in a saving of Rs 100 crore to the exchequer".

"Money we save from giving up LPG subsidy is the money we will use for the poor, so that they have access to clean energy too," PM Modi said.

The Prime minister said that leakages in LPG subsidy have stopped with direct transfer of subsidy into bank accounts.

The Prime Minister was speaking after inaugurating "Urja Sangam" 2015 in New Delhi.

Modi said that 12 crore bank accounts opened under the Jan Dhan scheme are being used for transferring subsidies directly to the consumers which has helped in plugging the leakages and effectively fighting corruption.

"To fight corruption, if institutional mechanism, transparent mechanism, policy driven system can be put in place then we can prevent leakages. And this has been proved by cash transfer," the Prime Minister said.

Referring to India's 77 per cent dependence on energy imports, Modi said the effort should be to reduce it by 10 per cent by 2022, when India will celebrate 75 years of Independence.

"We can reduce this import by at least 10 per cent in 2022. This 10 per cent we will produce ourselves and this should be our dream.

"If we become successful in reducing import by 10 per cent in 2022, by achieving 10 per cent growth in domestic production, then I can assure you that by 2030 we can reduce this import to 50 per cent," he added.

(With inputs from agencies)

