Ranchi: Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), which provides subsidised LPG connections to women from below-poverty-line (BPL) households to protect them from health hazards, got a pat from a famous global health and environmental scientist on Monday.

"India can be proud of this programme for providing clean fuel to hundreds and millions of women," said Kirk R. Smith, a professor of global environment health at University of California, whose contributions to Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was recognised through the 2007 Nobel Prize that he shared with the IPCC.

Smith said the scheme was not a subsidy, but a social investment.

He was speaking at the inaugural session of a two-day conference on "LPG: Catalyst of social change", organised by Delhi-based Research and Development Initiatives at a Ranchi hotel. The conference, inaugurated by chief minister Raghubar Das, was also attended by Union petroleum and natural gas minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

The first such conference was held in Bhubaneswar in September 2016.

Though PMUY was introduced across the country in May 2016, it was being run on a pilot basis in Dumka since October 2015.

"The Jharkhand government extended its whole-hearted support and the impact is visible," Pradhan said, adding what began in Dumka spread across the country and became a success story. "The PMUY scheme has indeed worked as a catalyst for social change," the minister said.

LPG penetration has increased to 80 per cent in January this year from 56 per cent in 2014. It also nearly doubled to 53 per cent from 27 per cent in rural India during the period.

"Well-to-do families use up to seven refills every year on an average," Pradhan said, adding that the beneficiaries across the country were using four refills every year while in Jharkhand the figure is three refills annually because of the availability of alternative fuels.

The minister said the success of PMUY had prompted the government to increase the targeted outreach to 8 crore from 5 crore within the next three years.

"This will enable us to cover such households that have been left out," the chief minister said, adding that LPG is no more a symbol of affluence.

Das said Jharkhand once lagged behind with 25 per cent LPG coverage in 2014 but now the figure had gone up to 45 per cent and would rise to 55 per cent.

There conference will be divided into 10 sessions spread over two days.