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Buoyed by the speed of achieving the 1.5-crore beneficiary target under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) and to strengthen the supply chain to boost the ambitious scheme, the ministry of petroleum and natural gas has identified five states wherein 2,500 new liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) distributors will be given licences. “Soon, Bihar, Jharkhand Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal will get a total of 2,500 new distributors,” said a government official. These will be in addition to the locations already been identified and advertised for, including Uttar Pradesh (1,028), Odisha (400), Uttarakhand (77) and Punjab (26). The NDA government in May 2016 launched PMUY with an aim to provide clean cooking fuel to 5 crore women belonging to the below poverty line category with the first year target at 1.5 crore. However, the target was achieved within eight months by the start of December 2016.FE had earlier reported that the government will launch the scheme in the North-Eastern states of the country