The latest NFHS-6 data shows households with electricity in India have risen from 96.8% to 98.3%.
But a key indicator — use of clean cooking fuel — is missing.
This omission obscures assessment of flagship schemes like Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, even as earlier NFHS-5 data showed over 40% households still lacked access to clean fuel.
The sixth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-6) has some key indicators missing, including ‘households using clean fuel for cooking’, which would have revealed the performances of at least two flagship schemes of the Narendra Modi government. The report, however, showed that access to electricity has improved by 1.5 per cent.
NFHS, the largest health survey of the country, is conducted by the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), under the aegis of the Union health ministry. NFHS-6 was carried out in 2023-24.
According to the factsheets of the NFHS-6 which were released on May 29, 2026, ‘population living in households with electricity’ increased to 98.3 per cent across India compared to 96.8 in 2019-21 and 99.2 in 2015-16. Assessment of access to clean cooking fuel was absent from the factsheets.
The previous report (NFHS-5) conducted in 2019-21 showed that only 58.6 per cent households had access to clean cooking fuel. This wide gap raised questions about the efficacy of the Union government’s Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), which was supposed to ease the way for liquified petroleum gas (LPG) connections to poor women.
Launched in 2016, PMUY is a flagship scheme that aims to make clean cooking fuel such as LPG available to rural and deprived households which were otherwise using traditional cooking fuels like firewood, coal, cow-dung cakes, etc. According to the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC) dashboard, as of May 26, 2026, total connections under PMUY are 105 million, and the country has about 332 million active domestic LPG connections.
Despite the impressive reach of PMUY, 40.6 per cent of the country’s (urban: 9.5 per cent and rural: 56.1 per cent) population still relied on firewood, dung cake and other forms of biomass, according to NFHS-5. The previous report also noted that exposure to household smoke, whether from solid cooking fuels or tobacco, has harmful health effects. Data from the National Sample Survey Office’s (NSSO) 78th round Multiple Indicator Survey, released in 2020-21, tells a similar story: More than 46 per cent people in rural India continue to cook with biomass.
From a February ground visit across villages of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, Down To Earth (DTE) found that access to energy has improved in recent years, but it remains unaffordable for many. As a result, while households that cannot afford an LPG connection and are not covered under PMUY continue to rely on unhealthy cooking fuels, dependence on biomass also persists among those that do have access to LPG. Affordability, reliability and local resource availability continue to determine how rural households power their lives.
Meanwhile, India’s LPG sales fell 13.1 per cent to 2.2 million tonnes (mt) in April 2026 compared to 2.5 mt a year earlier, PPAC data, released on May 20, showed. Consumption had already been slowing in recent months, declining from 3 mt in January 2026 to 2.8 mt in February and 2.3 mt in March.
In comparison, LPG consumption was 2.8 mt in January 2025, 2.5 mt in February and 2.7 mt in March. The April dip coincided with severe geopolitical disruptions in West Asia following the US-Israel war with Iran and prolonged instability around the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical energy shipping routes. These disruptions affected global LPG trade, freight movement and shipping availability.
India’s 60 per cent dependence on imported LPG leaves domestic consumption vulnerable to such global shocks. Domestic LPG production in April was 1.3 mt against consumption of 2.2 mt, underscoring the import gap.
Around 14 per cent of connections in FY25 were classified as “inactive”, meaning no refill had been taken in the previous year. “Refill rates are especially low among the beneficiaries of PMUY,” a senior official at the ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas told DTE in March, requesting anonymity.
While households that rely exclusively on LPG typically use seven to eight cylinders a year, PMUY beneficiaries in most states demand fewer than three, falling to as little as one or two in parts of eastern and northeastern states. High upfront costs, despite subsidies and persistent supply chain constraints, remain the main deterrents, said the official.
The result is continued reliance on polluting cooking fuels such as firewood and dung cakes. A February 2026 report by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, titled India’s Clean Cooking Shift: Scaling non-fossil fuel solutions found that 37 per cent of Indian households still depend primarily on polluting cooking fuels, with the figure rising to 51 per cent in rural areas.