New Delhi, March 18 -- Panic bookings for domestic liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cylinders have eased by over 27% from a peak of 8.9 million on March 13 because of supply management, a government official said, adding that LPG situation in the country is still a matter of concern, but cooking gas cylinders are supplied to households on priority. "As far as the panic booking is concerned, there is a downward trend," Sujata Sharma, joint secretary in the petroleum ministry said. The peak of panic booking was on March 13 when about 89 lakh (8.9 million) bookings for refills took place, she said. "Yesterday, this number was around 70 lakh (7 million)," she added. On an average oil marketing companies (OMCs) are distributing about 5 to 6 million refills every day. Before the crisis, the bookings were around 5 million a day. Speaking at the inter-ministerial briefing, Sharma said the government is meeting domestic demand of LPG on priority by reducing supplies to bulk users such as commercial and industrial units. The petroleum ministry on Tuesday clarified that biometric Aadhaar authentication or e-KYC is only needed for "unauthenticated" LPG customers. India has over 330 million LPG customers, including 105.1 million Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) beneficiaries. The eKYC is mandatory for a PMUY beneficiary to get a deposit-free LPG connection. Sharma said the electronic know your customer (e-KYC) is not a new requirement but added that "no connection has been disconnected for the want of e-KYC." In its clarification, the ministry said the requirement is not a new one. Referring to its March 15 post on e-KYC, it added: "The recent post by the ministry is a part of the ongoing efforts of the Government to encourage more LPG consumers to complete biometric Aadhaar authentication." "The requirement of eKYC applies to those LPG consumers who have not done eKYC so far. If you are a non-PMUY customer and have done it before, you don't need to do it again," the ministry added in the post. But PMUY customers need to do eKYC "only once every financial year"....