Kolkata, March 9 (IANS): Rural IT services enabler Sahaj e-Village (SEVL) on Monday said it has signed an agreement with the IOC for selling five kilogramme cooking gas cylinders across Assam, Bihar, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

The initial agreement with the state-owned Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) is meant to sell the cylinders through its Common Service Centers (CSC).

"We are extremely pleased to have tied-up with Indane and are sure that this critical service would increase adoption as well as improve conditions in the Rural markets we serve," Sanjay Panigrahi, the chief executive officer of the rural IT enabler, said in a statement.

Part of infrastructure finance company, Sreai, the private firm has more than 27,000 CSCs across the nation which reaches out to 2700,00,000 people in rural India.

According to the Kolkata-based company, 142 million rural Indian households use firewood and other solid fuels, such as animal dung, charcoal, crop waste and coal, as their primary source of household energy.

The soot generated not only results in air pollution caused by fumes from cooking, heating and lighting activities but also shortens life span of people in rural India.

"The only solution to bring about a change in the cooking habits of rural Indians is to introduce clean-burning LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas) connections in every rural household by setting up low-cost distribution agencies across rural India," it said.

As per the data revealed by the IT firm, a total of 4,183 agencies had been commissioned as part of the plan to take LPG cylinders to rural India. Nearly 9.5 million of the 17.8 million LPG consumers are settled in rural areas.