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Informist, Thursday, Mar. 19, 2026

NEW DELHI – The government Thursday urged consumers to wait for the home delivery of their cooking gas cylinders after booking and not queue up outside distribution agencies. Senior officials said that the problem was in the distribution of LPG cylinders, not in the supply.

Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas Joint Secretary Sujata Sharma said that instances of panic booking have come down, but people are still queuing up outside distribution agencies. "Once booked, you should wait for the home delivery of cylinder," she said, adding that against a total online booking of 5.6 million LPG cylinders on Wednesday, 5.49 million cylinders were supplied.

"Around 6,000 raids were conducted against hoarders of liquefied petroleum gas cylinders in several states on Wednesday," Sharma said at an inter-ministerial press briefing Thursday. Of these, 1,100 raids were conducted in Uttar Pradesh in which more than 1,000 cylinders have been seized, 17 FIRs lodged and one person arrested.

In Madhya Pradesh, around 2,500 cylinders were seized during 1,632 raids. In Telangana, around 1,000 raids were conducted and 2,300 hoarded cylinders were seized. In addition, teams of oil marketing companies also conducted surprise inspections at over 2,000 retail outlets and LPG distributorships, she said. 

The senior government official said that in the face of the crisis, the government is trying to diversify its sources of LPG and liquefied natural gas. "We are picking up cargoes from sources other than those based in West Asia. We have already diversified our crude oil procurement, and now we are also trying to diversify LPG and LNG sources. Some of the LPG is coming from the US now. The US and Australia are also big suppliers of LNG," she said.  

So far there is no increase in the price of India's crude oil basket and don't see any increase in prices of petrol and diesel, the official said.

She said there was 100% supply of piped natural gas for domestic use and the compressed natural gas for transport. The official said the state governments must prioritise supply of cooking gas to domestic consumers and act against hoarding and black-marketing of LPG. She urged people to switch to alternate fuels wherever possible.

Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said that are were sufficient stocks of fertiliser for the coming kharif season, and that more supplies are expected to land by the end of March. "The Department of Fertilisers has put out global tenders well in advance in view of the current situation and they have received very good response. We expect a bulk of the quantities ordered from a variety of sources to come by end of March," he said.

C. Senthil Rajan, joint secretary, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, cautioned consumers against cyber fraud in the name of gas bills. He warned that if anyone receives a gas bill ending with ".apk" extension in their phone messages, they must not open it as it can be a malware that can steal bank details. "You should inform the police and seek help," he said.  End 

Reported by Asim Khan

Edited by Akul Nishant Akhoury

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