The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the increase in the target for the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, meant to provide cooking-gas connections to rural women, to eight crore from the earlier five crore. The deadline for achieving the target is 2020.

The Cabinet also approved an additional allocation for the scheme of Rs. 4,800 crore.

The meeting took a slew of decisions across sectors, including increasing the minimum support price for copra, extending the Discovered Small Fields Policy to include more oil and gas fields, approving several bilateral agreements signed by India, and giving ex post facto approval to the changes made in the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Bill.

MSP for copra

“The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs has given its approval for increase in the minimum support price for fair average quality (FAQ) of ‘milling copra’ to Rs. 7,500 a quintal for 2018 season from Rs. 6,500 per quintal in 2017,” the government said in a press statement.

“The MSP for FAQ of ‘ball copra’ has been increased to Rs. 7,750 per quintal for the 2018 season from Rs. 6,785 per quintal in 2017.”

“The Union Cabinet has approved the incorporation of the official amendments to the Major Port Authorities Bill 2016, which is pending in Parliament,” another release said.

“The Cabinet has given its approval for extending the Discovered Small Field Policy notified on October 14, 2015 to identified 60 discovered small fields/un-monetised discoveries for offer under the Discovered Small Field Policy Bid Round-ll,” the government added. “Out of these, 22 fields/discoveries belong to Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) Limited, five belong to Oil India Limited (OIL) and 12 are relinquished fields/discoveries from the New Exploration and Licensing Policy (NELP) blocks.”