As West Asia’s conflict-driven power disaster continues to escalate, information on liquefied petroleum gasoline (LPG) consumption exhibits that states with the very best variety of beneficiaries of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), a program aimed primarily at rural households, are likely to devour probably the most LPG general, however households in these states devour much less LPG per thirty days than states with massive city populations.
Over the previous three a long time, India’s whole LPG consumption has elevated six instances from 446 TMT (thousand metric tonnes) in 1998-99 to 2,754 TMT in 2025-26, in line with information launched by the Petroleum Planning and Evaluation Authority (PPAC) below the Union Ministry of Petroleum and Pure Gasoline.
The 2000s and 2010s noticed the very best progress charge in LPG consumption, between 8% and 11% yearly. From 2016 to 2017, after the launch of PMUY, which supplies free LPG connections and backed cylinders to poor rural households, LPG consumption surged considerably, with a year-on-year progress charge of 10.1%. Nevertheless, from 2020 onwards, consumption progress slowed down as LPG connections reached saturation ranges.
Till now, rural households historically relied on gasoline sources reminiscent of firewood and animal dung for cooking, however with the introduction of PMUY, LPG has turn out to be accepted as a cooking gasoline. In response to responses to a Lok Sabha query, 80% of PMUY beneficiaries had been rural households on the finish of 2024.
Presently, there are 33.37 billion LPG prospects throughout India, together with 10.56 billion PMUY connections.
PPAC information as of December 2025 exhibits that primarily rural and poor states have the very best variety of LPG customers, particularly below PMUY, and the very best whole month-to-month LPG consumption.
Uttar Pradesh alone has 4.87 billion LPG customers, together with 1.88 billion PMUY beneficiaries, accounting for 15% of India’s whole LPG customers. Different states with the very best LPG consumption are Maharashtra at 3.2 billion, West Bengal at 2.72 billion, Tamil Nadu at 2.4 billion, Bihar at 2.33 billion and Karnataka at 1.9 billion.
Underneath the Ujjwala scheme, after UP, West Bengal has the very best variety of beneficiaries with 1.24 billion, adopted by Bihar with 1.18 billion, Madhya Pradesh with 890,000 and Rajasthan with 7.43 million. In every of those states, rural households make up a big portion of the inhabitants. In response to the 2011 Census, 69.8% of India’s inhabitants is rural; this determine is 77.7% in UP, 68.1% in Bengal, 88.7% in Bihar, 72.4% in Madhya Pradesh and 75.1% in Rajasthan.
An evaluation of the typical month-to-month consumption of LPG per family exhibits that city customers use rather more cooking gasoline than rural customers. For instance, households in largely city Delhi use a mean of 11.4 kg of LPG per thirty days, whereas in Bihar and UP, the place many of the inhabitants is rural, the typical month-to-month consumption per family is barely 6.7 kg and seven.7 kg, or lower than half a cylinder, respectively.
This consumption sample has a robust correlation with PMUY beneficiaries, 80% of whom stay in rural areas. Within the states with probably the most Ujjwala connections, reminiscent of Bihar and UP, nearly all of the inhabitants lives in rural areas. A comparability of common month-to-month LPG consumption per family in a predominantly rural state like Bihar and a predominantly city state like Delhi means that rural households have networks however usually tend to prolong cylinders over longer durations of time or use different cooking fuels, whereas city households rely solely on LPG and use it extra intensively.
Month-to-month utilization per family additionally correlates with per capita earnings. Households in richer states usually tend to devour extra LPG every month than in poorer states.
Principally rural states have decrease common family consumption, despite the fact that a few of them use probably the most LPG on the state stage. For instance, UP consumes a mean of 377.4 TMT of LPG per thirty days, which is the very best amongst all states, however ranks twenty second within the nation in common family month-to-month consumption. The identical is true in states like Bengal, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. All these states have among the many lowest common family consumption, despite the fact that they rank among the many high states by way of whole month-to-month LPG consumption.
