(From left) Principal secretary of food and consumer protection department Tripurari Sharan, food and consumer protection minister Shyam Rajak and IOCL general manager BB Chaudhary at the news conference in Patna on Tuesday. Picture by Ranjeet Kumar Dey

Patna, April 26: Book your liquid petroleum gas (LPG) cylinder through a text message or a phone call now.

Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL) today launched the service for its LPG consumers in the state capital.

With the introduction of an automated united system (AUS) for refill booking in place, around 4.58 lakh Indane, IOCL’s LPG brand name, consumers would be benefited in the capital. The facility would be available at 34 distributors in the Patna market.

Booking through interactive voice response system (IVRS) and SMS would be extended to all major cities, including Muzaffarpur, Bhagalpur, Gaya, Darbhanga, Samastipur and Begusarai, before the end of 2011.

IOCL customers have to book the first refill through IVRS and get his mobile phone number registered with their local distributors. For subsequent booking through SMS, he/she has only to type “refill” and send it to 9708024365.

Booking for the first time through IVRS, a customer will have to dial 9708024365. A customer will have to press the distributor’s phone number with STD code and then press 1 to confirm the number. Now the system will confirm the complete consumer number. The consumer needs to press 1 for refill booking, 2 for complaint registration and 3 for queries.

Hindustan Petroleum (HP) has already launched its SMS & IVRS service in the capital on April 9 among its 60,000 LPG consumers. HP official sources said customers would have to register themselves on 9507123456 through the IVRS system.

Expressing satisfaction on the launching of the service, Sumita Singh, a homemaker at Boring Canal Road, told The Telegraph: “This service should have been started much earlier.”

At the launch, food and consumer protection minister Shyam Rajak said: “Since the scheme is new, the consumers will face some initial problems. We need complete co-operation of both consumers and distributors. The government will take stern action against erring distributors who will try to scuttle the process.”

Asked whether or not distributors would try to scuttle the process, R.N. Dutta, senior area manager, said: “There is no chance of distributors interfering with the system, as it is computerised and we have a dedicated server for it. The moment distributors switch on their computers, the main server would download all the bookings to them.”

When pointed out that the system did not work in Calcutta, Dutta said the service was launched in Calcutta five years back when it did not work owing to faulty software. But we relaunched it last month with IVRS, which is running well.”