Mukhya Mantri Grihini Suvidha Yojana, Himachal Pradesh

What is Mukhya Mantri Grihini Suvidha Yojana?

Mukhya Mantri Grihini Suvidha Yojana is a scheme of the Government of Himachal Pradesh that gives a free domestic LPG connection, a gas stove and three free refill cylinders to households that had no cooking gas connection at all. The nodal department is the Department of Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs, and the scheme was launched on 26 May 2018.

The reason the scheme exists is specific and worth stating clearly. The central government's Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana provides free LPG connections, but its eligibility list did not cover every household in Himachal Pradesh that was still cooking on a wood or dung chulha. Grihini Suvidha Yojana was designed to fill exactly that gap, taking the households Ujjwala had left out. Himachal Pradesh used the two schemes together to push towards being a smoke-free, dhuan-mukt, state, and the combination is the reason the state's coverage moved as quickly as it did.

Key features

• Free domestic LPG connection with a gas stove.
• Three free refills provided with the connection.
• Connection and stove collected from the applicant's nearest LPG distributor, not from a government office.
• The applicant is the woman of the household.
• Aimed at families not covered by Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana.

Who can get Mukhya Mantri Grihini Suvidha Yojana?

You can apply if:

• You are a woman and the homemaker of the household. The connection is issued in the woman's name, which is the same design principle Ujjwala uses.
• You are a permanent resident of Himachal Pradesh.
• No member of your family holds an LPG connection in their own name.
• Your family was not covered under Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana or any other government LPG scheme.
• Your family falls within the poor or Below Poverty Line category that the scheme targets.

You cannot apply if:

• Any family member already has an LPG connection. This is the condition that decides the largest number of cases, and it is checked against the ration card. A connection in a husband's, a son's or a father-in-law's name in the same household disqualifies the family, even if the applicant herself has never held one.
• Your family already received a connection under Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana or another government programme. Grihini Suvidha Yojana is a complement to Ujjwala, not a second helping of it.
• A family member is a government, board or corporation employee.
• A family member is a pensioner.
• A family member is an income tax payer.
• The family is not domiciled in Himachal Pradesh.

The exclusion set is essentially the same shape as the one the state applies to its other household welfare schemes: a family with a salaried government connection, a pension or a tax filing is treated as able to buy its own gas connection.

What documents are required?

The department publishes the full document list on page 2 of the same PDF that carries the forms, so printing the whole PDF rather than a single page is the sensible first step.

How to apply for Mukhya Mantri Grihini Suvidha Yojana

1. Open the Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs Department portal at food.hp.gov.in and go to the Downloadable Forms option under Citizen Services.
2. Select the Himachal Grihini Suvidha Yojana form and download the PDF. The file is a single document with three usable parts: the e-KYC form on page 1, the list of required documents on page 2, and the application form on page 3.
3. Print and complete both forms. Fill the e-KYC form with your Aadhaar details and the application form with your household details, entering your name exactly as it appears on your Aadhaar card and ration card.
4. Sign the declarations confirming that no family member holds an LPG connection and that the family is not covered under Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana. These declarations are what the department relies on, and a false entry is grounds for cancelling the connection later.
5. Attach self-attested copies of the Aadhaar card, ration card and residence proof.
6. Submit the completed file to your nearest LPG distributor or the concerned food and supplies office, and collect an acknowledgement.
7. Collect the connection and stove from the gas agency once the case is approved. The department's own description is that beneficiaries receive these items from their nearest gas agency, so the last step of the scheme happens at the distributor rather than at a government counter.

There is no online submission route. The portal publishes the form, but the completed form travels on paper.

What exactly do you receive?

Mukhya Mantri Grihini Suvidha Yojana provides a free domestic LPG connection together with a gas stove, and three free refill cylinders with it. The free-refill component has been extended at different points for existing beneficiaries: 2.51 lakh beneficiaries were given one further free refill and 40,000 beneficiaries were given two additional free refills.

Because the additional-refill rounds are announced from time to time rather than being a standing entitlement, the reliable way to know what you are due in the current year is to ask at your LPG distributor, who holds the beneficiary list for the agency.

The scheme carried a budget allocation of Rs 65 crore for FY 2022-23, which was an increase of Rs 45 crore over the previous year, an indication of how far the state pushed the refill component once the connection rollout was largely complete.

How to check your application status

1. Ask at the LPG distributor where you submitted the form. The distributor holds the beneficiary list and can tell you whether your case has been approved for release of the connection.
2. Follow up with the District Food and Supplies Controller if the distributor has no record of your file, quoting the acknowledgement you were given at submission.
3. Keep your acknowledgement. With no online tracker for this scheme, the receipt is the only proof that your form was filed on a particular date.

Why Grihini Suvidha applications get rejected

• An existing LPG connection in the household, discovered when the distributor checks the ration card against the connection database. This is by a wide margin the most common reason.
• The family is already an Ujjwala beneficiary, which places it outside the gap this scheme was created to fill.
• A family member is a government employee, pensioner or income tax payer.
• Incomplete e-KYC form, where page 1 of the PDF was left blank because the applicant did not realise the download contains two separate forms.
• Name mismatch between Aadhaar and the ration card, which stalls the e-KYC.
• Residence proof missing, so permanent residence in Himachal Pradesh cannot be established.

Most of these are fixed by correcting the one document and resubmitting through the same distributor. A rejection on the existing-connection ground is different in kind, because it is a substantive finding rather than a paperwork gap, and it cannot be cured by resubmission.

Where to raise a grievance

Start with the LPG distributor where the form was submitted, then the District Food and Supplies Controller, and then the Department of Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs, Government of Himachal Pradesh. The department's portal at food.hp.gov.in carries its contact details along with a route for filing a complaint in the consumer forum, which is the correct escalation if a distributor demands money for a connection that is meant to be free.

The connection, the stove and the three refills are free under this scheme. No distributor is entitled to charge a "connection fee", a "file charge" or a deposit for them.