New Delhi, Feb 7 (IANS): Denying that the Karnataka government is implementing the Mukhya Mantri Anila Bhagya Yojane (MMABY) in collaboration with the Centre, the Union Petroleum Ministry on Tuesday said that the state is going ahead with scheme directly without involving the national oil marketing companies (OMCs), and thus does not have the approval of the Union government.

Under the MMABY scheme, free LPG connections are given to Below Poverty line (BPL) families across Karnataka. The centre government has launched the Pradhana Manti Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) for such a purpose at a countrywide level.

Referring to a Karnataka government advertisement in a prominent daily's Bengaluru edition, an official statement here said that the state government earlier approached the Ministry for approval of MMABY and was advised to implement it "as a complementary scheme of PMUY" and "follow the procedure of implementing the Scheme through OMCs only, being done in case of states Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Assam, Punjab and Haryana".

"The state government while announcing the current implementation modalities of MMABY has gone back on the earlier agreed commitment in the joint meeting of Union Petroleum Minister and the Karnataka Minister of Food and Civil Supplies," it said.

"Therefore, it is clarified that current format of MMABY not being in line with established procedure and hence is not having concurrence of Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas," it added.