Five petrol pumps fined for irregularities in Bhubaneswar

The Food and Consumer Welfare Department conducted surprise checks at 16 petrol pumps here and issued challans to five found with discrepancies.
Petrol pumps  ( File photo | Reuters)
Petrol pumps ( File photo | Reuters)

BHUBANESWAR: The Food and Consumer Welfare Department on Tuesday conducted surprise checks at 16 petrol pumps here and issued challans to five found with discrepancies. The five retail outlets violated Legal Metrology and Packaged Commodity Rules and a fine of `45,000 was collected from them.

Two retail outlets were penalised `10,000 each for ‘short delivery’ of fuel, two were charged `10,000 each for violation of the rules of Packaged Commodity (PC) and one outlet was fined `5,000 for not displaying verification certificate, Director, Legal Metrology Anurag Bhuyan said.

The two petrol pumps, Jay Auto Centre at Kalpana Square and Lingaraj Filling Station at Nuagaon square on National Highway 316 were penalised for short delivery. The shortage in five litres of fuel delivered at these places was more than 30 ml which is beyond the permissible limit of 25 ml.

A fuel station in the City, which sold distilled water of dubious firms, was booked under the PC Rules while another was fined for not displaying the verification certificate issued by the department at a visible location on its premises, Bhuyan said.

Four squads were constituted for carrying out inspections at retail outlets under the Essentials Commodities Act. Each team consisted of Inspectors of the Legal Metrology, sales officers and technicians of oil companies and local police.

On Monday, the department had issued a directive to the Legal Metrology Directorate for inspecting petrol pumps across the State and start from the Capital City.

The recent move of the State Government came in the wake of reports of ‘short delivery’ at petrol pumps which surfaced in Uttar Pradesh last month. The teams essentially looked into the functionality of electronic chips installed in delivery machines and matched metre reading to quantity of fuel delivered to consumers, an Inspector of the Legal Metrology said on conditions of anonymity.

Related Stories

No stories found.
The New Indian Express
www.newindianexpress.com