Chennai, Jan. 14: Cooking the Pongal meal could be a piece of cake for lakhs of Tamil Nadu women next year.

After free colour TV sets, 80 lakh poor families in the state will now get a free cooking gas connection and a double-burner stove.

The DMK government, offering one sop after another since it came to power last May, today announced the scheme as its “Pongal gift” to women.

If the TVs were meant to be a source of knowledge and entertainment, the LPG scheme will “mitigate the sufferings of women cooking with firewood”, chief minister M. Karunanidhi said.

The first phase of the five-year scheme is to cover three lakh homes by March. But only some 35,000 households may actually get the connection and stove — which come with the first cylinder free — by that deadline.

The oil majors are reluctant to release the cylinders till the targeted homes, most of them with thatched roofs, build a table-like platform in their kitchens as a fire safety measure.

The government, though, has already sanctioned its cooperation, food and consumer protection department an advance of Rs 60 crore for the 3 lakh first-phase connections, stipulating that a single connection must not cost more than Rs 2,000.

This includes the prices of the stove and cylinder as well as the security deposit of Rs 850 per cylinder and the Rs 100 for the pressure regulator, to be paid by the department to the oil companies. The government has managed to get the gas distributors’ association to waive the installation and inspection charges of Rs 130.

Even after getting the gas connection, the beneficiary can draw her quota of kerosene with her ration card. But she is not allowed to transfer the LPG connection to another for at least three years.

Opposition leader J. Jayalalithaa dubbed the scheme an “eyewash”, wondering how the families would afford the cylinders — only the first one is free — at a time when cooking gas prices are spiralling. Many fear that small hotel owners could use the women to get an extra gas connection.

Karunanidhi didn’t explain how the state exchequer would fund all the pro-poor schemes in the long run. The chief minister, however, appealed to the Centre to be generous with aid.

Karunanidhi handed over the first batch of free gas stoves and connections at a programme today in the presence of Union petroleum minister Murli Deora and Union communications and IT minister Dayanidhi Maran.