Commuters, on Monday, were pleasantly surprised to see petrol bunks functioning. This comes in the wake of petrol dealers associations calling a strike. However, in the afternoon, they decided to called off the proposed strike.
Petroleum dealers associations on Monday alleged they had withdrawn the strike following a threat from oil company officials.
“A senior official of Bharat Petroleum called close to 50 dealers in the city and threatened to withdraw their licence. We, then, decided to withdraw the strike in the larger interest of the dealers,” said B R Ravindranath, president of Bangalore Petroleum Dealers’ Association. He said while the strike was successful in Mysore, dealers in Bangalore kept the bunks open.
“Our legal way of protest has been sabotaged by this official,” he said.
However, sources from the associations said the strike did not receive a good response in Bangalore and that was also one of the reasons to call off the strike.
Company officials, however, rebutted the claim and said they had just asked the dealers not to cause inconvenience to customers.
“We have requested our company dealers not to restrict their working hours as it may make us lose our customers,” said a senior official from BPCL, he added that the chances of cancelling the licences of dealers was too much of a speculative topic at this point.
He did not elaborate on what measures the company would take if the strike continued. However, talks are still on between the Confederation of Indian Petroleum Dealers (CIPD) and the oil companies in Mumbai. The state association member hoped the government would respond positively to their demands.