The free gas connections provided to BPL households under Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana crossed the two-and-a-half crore mark today. <br/><br/>This number was reached after President Pranab Mukherjee handed over a cooking gas connection to a beneficiary at his residence, Jangipur House in West Bengal. This meets half the target of distributing five crore free LPG connections to women from poor households.<br/><br/>In all, 10 women from the President's hometown Jangipur as well as Raghunath Ganj and Murshidabad were handed over free connections at a ceremony also attended by Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. <br/><br/>AIR correspondent reports that In May last year, the government embarked on a drive to provide free cooking gas connection to 5 crore women from poor households in three years to reduce the use of polluting fuels such as wood and dried cow dung.<br/><br/>The government is targeting increasing LPG usage to cover 80 per cent of the households by March 2019, against 72.8 per cent as on 1st of April. It has earmarked 8,000 thousand crore rupees to provide free LPG connection to women from families living below the poverty line.