Pump: Govt washes hands of taint

In an apparent reference to The Indian Express investigation which uncovered the scam and prompted the Prime Minister to order cancellation of all allotments made since January 2000, the Centre says a ‘‘section of the media’’ carried reports pointing to ‘‘alleged patronage being shown to persons with political connection/affiliation for selection as dealers/distributors.’’

The thrust of the Centre’s legal strategy seems to pass the buck to the DSBs because in its affidavit, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, has taken pains to clarify that the allegation of political patronage is not directed at any particular party. ‘‘The allotments had been made allegedly to persons who had connections cutting across political parties.’’

‘‘Notwithstanding the elaborate mechanism in place for dealing with complaints and a system for redressal of complaints and grievances in the process of selection, a controversy arose and there were newspaper reports regarding alleged irregularities in the process of allotment,’’ the Centre said, explaining the circumstances in which it took the controversial decision in August to cancel all dealerships.

The petition challenging the Government’s cancellation order is coming up for hearing on Tuesday before the Supreme Court after a gap of more than two months.

A bench comprising Justice Y K Sabharwal and Justice H K Sema will hear the matter on which an earlier bench headed by the then CJI, Justice B N Kirpal, put the cancellation order on hold.

The apex court had also stayed proceedings in various high courts on scores of petitions filed by aggrieved dealers and directed that it would transfer to itself some representative cases from across the country belonging to various categories of allotments.

It was in this context that the Centre came up with 11 allotment cases. At the instance of counsel P H Parikh, the court added a petition covering 19 allotments in Gujarat alone. All the cases on board no doubt lay bare the irregularities committed by DSB but, ironically, none of them involves the the political complicity which caused uproar in Parliament and paralysed both Houses in the last session.

Seven of the 11 ‘‘representative’’ allotments were made in the categories for Defence and paramilitary personnel, physically handicapped, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, freedom fighters and outstanding sportspersons.

Omkar Bajaj was allotted a pump in Guna district in Madhya Pradesh in the category for freedom fighters.

Deepali Dilip Jadhav, whose petition too has been made a ‘‘representative’’ case, secured an LPG agency in Ghodegaon in Pune on the merit of being an outstanding sportsperson. Another instance is of Karni Singh who was allotted a pump in Chittorgarh district in Rajasthan in the category for the physically handicapped.

The remaining petitions, pertaining to allotments under the general category, too did not figure in The Indian Express list of political allotments. Twenty petitions from Gujarat, bunched with the ‘‘representative’’ cases, are also non-controversial.