Nashik applicants still wait for piped gas connections

Nashik: It has been a long wait for a section of piped natural gas applicants in Nashik city to get the supply in their kitchen. However, there are others — who have been turning down requests to switch to PNG — and are now calling up the officials to take their bookings."The connections are made available in the neighbouring buildings, but not to our building. I have paid for the connections but not even the meter has been installed in any of the 8 flats in our building," said Anushka Patil, a resident of Rajeev Nagar. The disparity in distribution has sparked frustration among taxpayers. Residents noted that while infrastructure is visible on their streets, the final "last-mile" connectivity remained elusive."The roads have been dug up across the city by MNGL (Maharashtra Natural Gas Limited). As far as delivery is concerned, there are enormous delays. Every time any of our building members visit them they have some or the other excuse," pointed out Neeraj Chaudhary, another applicant from Nashik Road, who cleared the payments about one and half year back.Some of the MNGL authorities, however, said that most of the places were facing problems in getting administrative approvals for laying of lines and other works. But now the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas has issued a new regulation called the ‘deemed approval' policy, where permissions for laying pipelines were considered granted within 24 hours if no objection was raised by local authorities.Food and civil supplies minister Chhagan Bhujbal announced, "As per the guidelines by Central Govt, the PNG connections have to be delivered on war footing. At the same time, the PNG connections, where the infrastructure is ready, have been made compulsory to the LPG consumers. Denials to switch over will mean consumer not getting domestic cylinder refills in any case."At the same time several consumers who have not been too enthusiastic on getting the PNG connections despite availability have started calling MNGL for the booking."Over the weekend, we got several calls, from office lines and the sales teams who had already met the consumers in the past, asking them to get connected. They had refused then and are now rushing for booking of the connections," said the MNGL officer.