PUNE: The Maharashtra Natural Gas Ltd (MNGL) on Wednesday said the Pune Municipal Corporation 's ( PMC ) refusal to permission for digging work was hindering its plan to take piped natural gas (PNG) to more households in the city."We have to lay another 270km of pipelines for PNG to meet our target to reach all households in Pune. We last got permission to lay pipelines in 2016 and laid around 50km of pipelines. After that, PMC has denied permission to digging work. We might fall short of our target," MNGL managing director Arvind Tambekar said.On Monday, PMC on Monday cancelled all existing digging permissions based on a policy framed in 2014. Corporators at the general body meeting claimed that many companies, which have sought permission for such work, have not paid digging charges running into crores of rupees. City mayor Mukta Tilak said permissions issued without consent of the standing committee "should be cancelled".Tambekar said MNGL had targeted PNG connections for around 3 lakh households , of which it has been able to cover around 1.2 lakh. Despite a strong demand for PNG in the city, he said, MNGL was unlikely to see a return on investment any time soon."We do not earn too much revenue from the PNG project. It will be at least another 25 years before the project breaks even in terms of revenue. All that we charge now is a refundable deposit and some charges for the gas supplied. In effect, this is a social project," he said.Tambekar said this while addressing an event where MNGL — a joint venture of GAIL and Bharat Petroleum — launched a scheme to retrofit some models of gearless scooters with compressed natural gas (CNG) kits as part of a pilot project launched last year. Pune Lok Sabha member Anil Shirole said the scheme was an "achievement" for the city.Bank of Maharashtra is extending an Rs 12000 loan for the kit manufactured by an Iranian firm. MNGL is subsidizing the nearly 9.5% interest of the loan, but only for the first 5,000 applicants.MNGL officials claimed that users will save up to Rs 3,000 per month by using CNG, albeit depending on the daily use. "We have estimated that with more scooters opting for CNG, around 70-75 dispensing units are required. We are in talks with HPCL, IOC and BPCL to utlize their vacant space for setting up such units," said Santosh Sontakke, the commercial director for MNGL.

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