It’s in their court

The expected has happened. Prime Minister Vajpayee’s order, cancelling all allotments of petrol pumps as well as LPG and kerosene dealerships since January 2000, has attracted petitions from angry allottees challenging it in various high courts around the country. They argued that they got their dealerships purely on the basis of merit and not because of political connections. All these cases together will now, in all probability, be heard by the Supreme Court.

The NDA government will thus be called upon to demonstrate its ownership of the prime minister’s order rescinding the pump allotments. As we have argued in these columns, the order demonstrated the Vajpayee government’s courage to correct itself rather than pretend that its petrol patronage was perfectly in order. We had also hoped that the announcement was only the first step and that we would now see a thorough investigation into this business and the holding to account of those responsible for having cheated the country. Subsequent events indicated a marked lack of enthusiasm for a thorough clean up, both within the government and its main party, the BJP. This instinct was to brazen it out; to deploy offence as the best defence, was disappointing to say the least. The misdemeanours of the Congress’s past were duly dug out and paraded as justification for current crimes. Similarly, those who presided over the system took no responsibility for the blatant manner in which it was exploited to benefit a few. All they did was to pass the buck. The petroleum minister, Ram Naik, still maintains with a perfectly straight face that the government had no role in the allotments and the whole process of dealer selection was a matter between the oil companies concerned and Dealer Selection Boards. Such an argument nullifies the moral logic of the prime ministerial order.

Now, with the various cases before it, the government will be called upon to demonstrate its commitment to ensuring that the order is carried out, both in its letter and spirit. There is no doubt that its implementation has deprived many, who do not fall into the category of the ‘pump parivar’, of their entitlement. This is unfortunate but cannot be helped. The innocent invariably end up paying for the sins of the guilty. A way must be found to compensate them for their loss, even while ensuring that those who benefitted through unprincipled means are punished — and not just by being deprived of their nest eggs. On Independence Day, we can only hope that a process that promises a more transparent system of allotting oil and gas dealerships is not scuttled.