Slum households still using polluting fuels despite govt’s LPG push: Study

Many urban slum households in six states do not use LPG (cooking gas) exclusively and depend on a mix of polluting fuels, according to a recent study by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW).

The study said that only half of the urban slum households in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh, use LPG exclusively. This is despite 86 per cent of urban slum households in the six states having an LPG connection.

“The six states account for nearly a quarter of India’s urban slum population. Further, 16 per cent of the households are still using traditional fuels such as firewood, dung cakes, agriculture residue, charcoal, and kerosene as their primary fuel and over a third are stacking LPG with these polluting fuels.