The Hindu : New Delhi News : Petition filed in court over cooking gas crisis

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Sunday, Feb 24, 2008
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Petition filed in court over cooking gas crisis

Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI: A voluntary organisation here has moved the Delhi High Court praying for an inquiry into an artificial crisis of supply of cooking gas to domestic consumers in the Capital and the National Capital Region for the last one month.

The petitioner, Rajkumar Kaushik, president of the Society for Voice of Human Rights and Justice, submitted that the LPG gas dealers here and in the NCR had created an artificial crisis of the fuel to make a fast buck at the cost of the consumers.

He alleged that that the dealers had written their own rules without any authority. They had fixed a time gap of a fortnight for booking the supply of the next gas cylinder to a consumer after the last delivery and took another 15 days to deliver it.

The petroleum and gas supply public sector companies had issued no such instruction to their dealers, the petitioner contended.

Black market

He submitted that gas cylinders were available on demand in the black market with a re-filled cylinder fetching a premium of Rs.100 to 200.The petitioner has made the Union Ministry for Petroleum and Natural Gas, the petroleum and gas supply companies and two dealers as respondents in the case.

He also drew the Court’s attention to other lapses on the part of the dealers like not providing details of the stock position on the public notice board at their godowns, and leaving the consumers in the dark about the actual supply position.

He also urged the Court to issue directions to the Ministry and the supply companies to bring in transparency in their functioning.

The petition is listed for hearing this coming Wednesday before a Division Bench headed by Chief Justice M.K. Sharma.

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