Pumps will correct party conduct: Shourie

Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie tonight said the Government and the BJP were distressed with the petrol pump allotment issue and it woul...

Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie tonight said the Government and the BJP were distressed with the petrol pump allotment issue and it would act as an ‘‘important episode for correction’’ in the party’s future conduct. ‘‘All of us in the government and party are distressed that such a thing has happened,’’ Shourie said.

Asked what its impact would be on the BJP, he told Star News, ‘‘There is a great realisation by everybody that we are all judged by the idealism that we proclaim and we are held to them.’’

	Parliament panel had warned six months ago: Mulayam
NEW DELHI: Samajwadi party president Mulayam Singh Yadav on Sunday said the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Petroleum warned more than six months ago about the possibility of irregularities in allotment of petrol pumps, LPG and kerosene agencies. ‘‘Had the Government accepted our suggestions, it would not have to face what it is facing today,’’ Yadav, who is the chairman of the standing committee, said, adding, ‘‘My suggestion is that it should order an impartial probe into the scam.’’ (PTI)

Describing Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee’s decision to cancel all petrol pump allotments as ‘‘unprecedented and absolutely worthy of acclaim’’, Shourie said, ‘‘When such a thing occurs, it is best to do a jhatka. It was certainly not a knee-jerk reaction.’’

The Minister said that in December 2001, the chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Public Undertakings and BJP Parliamentary Party spokesman Vijay Kumar Malhotra had said the allotment system should not be adopted and ‘‘such things can boomerang’’.

Asked whether the episode had strengthened his case for privatising oil companies, he said, ‘‘It is only one of the many small arguments.

When a private party makes a wrong allotment, the company becomes less competitive. But when the government does it, the state is delegitimised.’’

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He said the government has decided in principle to disinvest HPCL and BPCL and only the quantum to be offered to the strategic partner was to be decided.

Shourie suggested whenever such allotments are made, the names, along with recommendations and letters be made public through the website and parliament library.

Denying any difference in the Government’s reaction to the pump issue vis-a-vis the Tehelka expose, Shourie said, there too, the then BJP president Bangaru Laxman resigned but issues such as the portal’s financial source and use of prostitutes came up.