Report on petrol pump scam

A two-judge committee, probing into the scam relating to allotment of 417 petrol pumps during the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) rule, today submitted its report to the Supreme Court.

It recommending cancellation of nearly 65 per cent of them saying these were made for "political considerations".

The committee, which was appointed by the court in 2002, went through the process adopted by dealer selection boards in allotting petrol pumps after the court noticed a newspaper report giving details of the irregularities. In 2002, the NDA government had cancelled all allotments but the apex court quashed the order.

In the wake of the scam, the NDA government in 2002 had cancelled all the 3,158 allotments made since january 2000.

However, the apex court quashed the order of cancellation of the allotments and referred the matter to a two-member committee comprising retired supreme court judge s c agrawal and retired delhi high court judge p k bahri.

While scrtinising the 417 allotments, the committee in its report has recommended cancellation of the majority of the allotments as they had been made due to political considerations without the dsbs following the rules laid down.