Five days before Manjunath’s murder, Govt issued an SOS

• Introducing a new “chemical marker” in PDS kerosene to make it easier to check its mixing in diesel.

• Tracking fuel-carrying trucks with the help of global positioning system (GPS) so that the movement of kerosene from the depot to village blocks can be monitored and any diversion detected.

• Allowing “third parties”—reputed organisations and NGOs—to draw samples from petrol pumps for lab testing. Currently, only oil firm inspectors and state civil supplies officers do this. This wouldn’t have put the entire onus of sampling and testing on officers like Manjunath. Also, this helps circumvent corrupt officers.

These orders weren’t sudden.

As early as September, oil firms, aware of the rampant malpractices and the dangers involved in inspection, had requested the ministry to permit field trials of introducing a marker to ‘‘prevent adulteration and diversion of PDS kerosene.’’

The ministry added more measures: allowing third parties to draw samples from the petrol pumps and install GPS on trucks ferrying kerosene.

As of now, these steps are just on paper. Although GPS tracking tanker movement to 50 blocks was to be covered by December 15, it is yet to be fixed on any vehicle as it is expensive, said sources.

Movement of trucks to another 150 blocks have to be brought under the tracking system by February 2006 with plans to cover movement of petrol and diesel tank trucks by December next year.

The ministry has also aproved oil industry’s proposal to try out chemical marker in kerosene. The chemical, whose composition is well-guarded by its developer Authentix of the United Kingdom, will be first tried out in Andhra Pradesh to establish its techno-economic viability.

If that succeeds, another marker will be developed for naphtha which is used for adulterating petrol.