Each flat in piped gas buildings or housing societies will be treated as a separate household, and will be given six subsidised LPG cylinders per year, LPG federation state president Usha Poonawalla has announced.

Poonawalla announced that each household in piped gas colonies would get its quota of subsidised cylinders. She added that the decision was taken to dispel chaos among housing societies where each household had piped gas connection.

Announcing the decision, she said, "Now, each flat in these buildings will get three subsidised cylinders till March 2013 and later from next year it will be six cylinders for the whole year. So now, the societies need not worry."

The LPG subsidy policy had come as big blow to the government's plans to encourage societies with piped gas connections as the LPG companies had initially announced that they would treat the entire colony with reticulate gas connection as a single unit.

A resident of a housing society, named Kamla Das, welcomed the decision saying it would provide residents of such as societies with a big respite.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas has announced that consumers will be allowed to retain multiple LPG connections but they would have to fork out more for cylinders from additional connections.

It means consumers with multiple connections will not have to go through additional Know Your Customer (KYC) formalities for their additional connection. But, cylinders from additional connections will cost nearly thrice as much as the subsidised cylinder.