Petrol scam blame game begins: Govt singles out judges

In an apparent attempt to distance itself from the petrol-pump allotment process and pass the buck to retired judges who headed the Dealer S...

In an apparent attempt to distance itself from the petrol-pump allotment process and pass the buck to retired judges who headed the Dealer Selection Boards, the Petroleum Ministry has asked the four oil companies to list cases in which their representatives were over-ruled by the DSB chiefs.

Several DSB chairmen have admitted to The Indian Express that they were ‘‘under pressure’’ to allot petrol pumps to particular candidates. But senior Ministry bureaucrats claim this exercise is just an attempt to prepare a ‘‘sample’’ for the Supreme Court should it be required.

The instructions marked ‘‘time bound’’ and available with The Indian Express, were sent to the four oil companies on Saturday with orders that the information be furnished the next morning.

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The companies were given a specific format to file the information in: location of the pump, the nature of dealership, the name of the DSB, the nature of complaint, the findings of the company and the decision of the DSB chief which was contrary to these findings.

Oil company officials, contacted by The Indian Express, say that they spent the entire weekend in office, going through files of complaints received by them and the action or inaction taken by the DSB Chairmen.

Sources say that two oil companies, namely the Bharat Petroleum Company Limited (BPCL) and the Hindustan Petroleum Company Limited (HPCL) have already traced two cases each.

The lists petrain to allotments of pumps in Uttar Pradesh (Kalpi), Maharashtra (Bassein) and two others in Rajasthan and Gujarat.

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Other company officials said they had sought more time from the Ministry and that their information was being compiled.

A scrutiny of old files showed that the company officials, for instance, challenged the annual income of the first empanelled candidate and these were found to be true during the subsequent spot assessment done by the company.

The written note sent by one company to the Ministry states, ‘‘Chairman has rejected the complaint and directed us to issue LOI (Letter of Intent) to the first empanelled candidate.’’

Ritu Sarin

Ritu Sarin is Executive Editor (News and Investigations) at The Indian Express group. Her areas of specialisation include internal security, money laundering and corruption. Sarin is one of India’s most renowned reporters and has a career in journalism of over four decades. She is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) since 1999 and since early 2023, a member of its Board of Directors. She has also been a founder member of the ICIJ Network Committee (INC). She has, to begin with, alone, and later led teams which have worked on ICIJ’s Offshore Leaks, Swiss Leaks, the Pulitzer Prize winning Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, Implant Files, Fincen Files, Pandora Papers, the Uber Files and Deforestation Inc. She has conducted investigative journalism workshops and addressed investigative journalism conferences with a specialisation on collaborative journalism in several countries. ... Read More

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