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SC for scrutiny of petrol pump allotments made on political grounds

The Supreme Court on Tuesday told the Union government that it would like to scrutinise allotment of petrol pumps and dealerships in petroleum products, allegedly on political reasons, while examining the legality of its decision to cancel all such allotments from January 2000.

Fixing December 11 for final hearing of the bunch of petitions challenging the government's decision to cancel the allotments, a bench comprising Justice Y K Sabharwal and Justice H K Sema directed that some of the allotments 'exposed by media' should be included within the sample cases to be taken into account by the court during the hearing.

"Solicitor General Kirti Raval will mention as representative cases some of the allotments that were questioned and highlighted by the media," the bench said.

When the bench asked Raval whether the government had made any examination of the files before taking the decision to order wholesale cancellations, the solicitor general said that a policy decision of this nature would not have been taken without some examination.

But Raval added he had no knowledge of the kind of examination done by the government.

But, he added that the government was ready to face any kind of inquiry and judicial examination to prove its bonafide in taking the decision.

"What the government has done is cancelled all. There would have been some cases that would have been allotted fairly. Has the government taken the trouble of examining which are the cases in which it found favouritism was done?" the bench asked.

Justice Sabharwal, who had examined the validity of the indiscriminate allotments of petrol pumps and dealerships of petroleum products by former petroleum minister Satish Sharma when he was the judge of the Delhi high court, recollected his experience in the matter.

"Those were stereotype allotments without any application of mind. The allotments were even made because some were from a particular constituency. But in those allotments also we found some to be done fairly and we segregated them from those which were allotted without any basis," he said.

In an omnibus interim order on August 28, the Supreme Court had stayed the government's August nine decision to cancel allotment of petrol pumps, gas agencies and kerosene dealerships from January 2000 and directed return of the cancelled allotments to the dealers within two weeks.

The court had said that the status quo order passed by the Supreme Court would be applicable to 2248 cases where the dealerships and agencies were commissioned.

But it had said that the status quo order would not be applicable to 1298 cases where the oil companies had issued only a Letter of Intent to the dealers without commissioning of the petrol pumps and the gas agencies or kerosene dealerships.

The court today refused to alter its August 28 interim order, but allowed the counsel to consult the solicitor general in selecting few more sample cases from the cancelled lot.

From among the large number of cases pending before high courts, the court had transferred only 11 petitions terming them as representative in nature addressing all questions raised in challenge to the August nine decision.

Complete Coverage: The Petrol Pumps Allotment Controversy

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