With the Kanwar Mela in Haridwar and other parts of Uttarakhand having started from August 1, the common people are facing acute domestic fuel crunch as not a single truck carrying cylinders has reached the gas agencies based in Garhwal region from the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) bottling plants, said the gas agency owners. Demanding immediate restoration of the supply, a dozen owners of gas agencies have protested outside the DM office on Tuesday. They demanded the district administration to take measures to improve supply of lPG cylinders from the Indian Oil Company bottling plants in Dehradun. According to the agency owners, they had met the IOC officials and district officers on the same earlier as the anxious customers were thronging the agencies to procure cylinders. They said the customers are pressuring them through political executives and bureaucrats for the same.
“Thing are grim, as over the past eleven days since the Kanwar Mela started in the state, no truck laden with cylinders has reached the gas agencies based in Dehradun,” said All India lPG Federation Uttarakhand Circle president and Valley Gas Agency owner Chaman lal.
He said that the cylinders to be supplied from bottling plants based in Karnal and Haridwar having stopped coming, the backlog in various gas agencies is on the rise.
There are around 1.5 lakh customers in Dehradun and around three or four thousands cylinders are in the backlog list at each of the district-based agencies. Chaman lal said, “We demand police forces from the administration from Thursday onwards as Kanwar Mela would conclude on Wednesday. After that, things would hopefully improve. But we fear chaos as a very large number of desperate customers might throng our agency for cylinders from Thursday. We need police protection at the agency so that the customers can get the cylinders according to the backlog list.”