Petroleum and Natural Gas ministry is targeting to increase the LPG access to more than 75 per cent of households by 2019. Speaking at a two-day international conference on 'LPG-Catalyst for Change' Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister of State said under the leadership of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi centre is committed to provide clean cooking fuel to the people at the grass-root level. <br/><br/>Lauding the benefits of Pahal and DBT scheme, Pradhan said within just two years the government has saved an estimated 3 billion US dollar. He also said the Give It Up campaign, a novel experiment in social engineering also found wide resonance with public. Adding that Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojna, he said the scheme has been rolled out with the objective of providing 50 million subsidized LPG connections to women of BPL households. As a result, a quantum jump by 27 per cent in consumer base of LPG connections in India from 130 million to 170 million households, Pradhan said.<br/><br/>The conference was inaugurated by Jharkhand Governor Smt. Droupadi Murmu at Bhubaneswar. Focusing on the problems arising due to absence of cooking gas and the usage of traditional bio mass cooking fuels and their impact on both health and environment, the Governor stressed on the need for an LPG enabled household, particularly in rural India. She said the initiatives taken by the government at the Centre to provide cooking gas to under-privileged poor people has led to large scale societal impact especially among the womenfolk.