The Nation: Petroleum Dealerships: Greasier Than a Stick

Six chairmen of the boards that select petrol and LPG dealers are axed for ignoring the petroleum minister's office and sticking to rules.

Slippery Ways: Ramamurthy's office wanted to bend selection rules

When he retired, V. Bhaskaran Nambiar, 71, had never imagined that one day he would have to knock on the doors of his former workplace to get his job back. But the retired judge was forced to move the Kerala High Court after the Petroleum and Natural Gas Ministry sacked him as chairman of the petroleum and LPG Dealer Selection Board (DSB) for Kochi circle on March 24. Nambiar was axed for he refused to toe the line of Union Petroleum Ministry mandarins in the selection of dealers.

THE HIT LIST

Justice V. B. Nambiar, chairman, Kochi DSB: Axed on March 24 for not bowing to minister's wishes.
Justice T.U. Mehta, chairman, Ahmedabad DSB: Sacked for ignoring advice from petroleum minister's office.
Justice R.K. Saxena, chairman, Lucknow DSB: Fired on March 5 for refusal to toe ministry's line.
Justice P.K. Mohanty, chairman, Bhubaneswar DSB: Removed on March 5 for reasons not assigned.
Justice C. Sriramulu, chairman, Secunderabad DSB: Sacked on February 27 for defying ministry.
Justice R.N. Prasad, chairman, Dhanbad DSB: Axed on March 2 for ignoring minister's office.

However, the ministry had egg on its face when the Kerala High Court stayed Nambiar's sacking and reinstated him as chairman of Kochi DSB on April 5. "They tried to shunt me out because I refused to bow to the demands made by some secretaries of Petroleum Minister V. Ramamurthy," he says candidly. He says he has been bombarded with recommendations from Ramamurthy's office right from the time he was appointed in December 1998. In his affidavit to the court, he has said that A.S. Bhalla, private secretary to Ramamurthy, and Prabhakaran, another official attached to the ministry, used to call him and rattle off names of people who were to be awarded the dealerships. Nambiar had brought this to the notice of the minister but Ramamurthy has not replied to his letters.

If it's any consolation to Nambiar, at least five other DSB chairmen have lost their jobs for the same reason. Among them is former Himachal Pradesh chief justice T.U. Mehta, who was sacked as chairman of the Ahmedabad DSB after he refused to accede to the wishes of the petroleum minister's office. "The ministry is shamelessly indulging in nepotism," he said in a letter to prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Mehta says Prabhakaran called him even while he was interviewing prospective dealers and said that the minister wanted the dealership awarded to a particular applicant. "I conveyed my inability to accede to such recommendations," he says. On another occasion, Bhalla called him to convey a similar recommendation during an interview session. Once again, Mehta refused to bow down. "The person recommended by the minister was so wanting in merit that he was at the bottom of the selection list," says Mehta. Stung by the refusal, the ministry issued an order terminating his two-year contract with immediate effect on March 5.

Justice R.K. Saxena, who was heading the Lucknow DSB, was given no better treatment. An upright person, Saxena had repeatedly rebuffed the recommendations sent by the ministry. On January 15, while he was conducting interviews of applicants in Lucknow, the ministry flashed a message to suspend all interviews with immediate effect. When it saw that Saxena was still in no mood to relent, the ministry removed him from the chairmanship on March 5.

In Andhra Pradesh, justice C. Sriramulu was shown the door barely four months after he was appointed chairman of the DSB for the Telangana region. The three-member board had chosen 17 candidates when the Petroleum Ministry suddenly decided to remove Sriramulu from the post on February 27. "The phone at my home was not working and I could not be contacted at the hotel where the interviews were conducted," he says, explaining why the ministry was miffed with him.

Even political connections have been of no help. Justice R.N. Prasad, chairman of the Dhanbad DSB and father of BJP MP Rita Verma, had to suffer the ignominy of a sacking after the ministry found that he steadfastly stuck to procedure. "I was removed because I strictly followed the rules and ignored the dictates of the minister's office," he says. In Orissa, although no reason was assigned for his removal, the AXE fell on justice P.K. Mohanty of the Bhubaneswar DSB on March 5.

Petrol pumps and LPG dealerships are fecund areas for scams. After former petroleum minister Satish Sharma was found guilty of graft in the allotment of petrol pumps in 1997, the Supreme Court directed the Central government to revamp the system that selected petroleum and LPG dealers in the country. The 18 Oil Selection Boards were to be replaced by 50 DSBs, each headed by a retired district or high court judge. The declared objective of the new system was "to ensure faster and fair selection of suitable candidates, transparency in selection (and) to prevent chances of irregularities and corruption ..."

The spate of sackings is an indication that the medicine hasn't worked. Justice Sriramulu says the guidelines governing the selection of dealers are so rigid that there is no way the selectors can pick an undeserving candidate. But greedy politicians and more-than-willing bureaucrats are continuously exerting pressure on the selection boards to bend the rules while selecting dealers. "It's a dirty job because lobbyists are chasing you all the time," admits Sriramulu.

Despite repeated efforts by India Today, Ramamurthy and ministry officials were unavailable for comments. But their intentions are made clear a April 21 order suspending all interviews. "This was done because the politicians in the caretaker government know that they would not get any pecuniary advantage from those selected as dealers," says Nambiar. Clearly, chemotherapy won't work. Surgery is required to weed out the cancer of corruption.