- The top court told the Centre the Constitution expects Parliament to make laws to appoint election commissioners
- The Centre asked if the SC could set these appointment norms
- The SC said it will have a detailed hearing on the issue in 2 months
Nagpur: As more and more petrol pumps are being caught for pilferage through rigging their dispensers, the political lobby has been reportedly activated to block the action route. It is learnt that most of the pumps that are found to be tampering the chips to provide less fuel quantity to the consumers are owned by BJP leaders. This political connection has kicked up the concerns over the pace of action by Thane crime branch.
Gold Rate
Thursday 09 Jan. 2025
However the cops claimed they would continue their raids to take the probe to their logical ends.
It was also reliably learnt that state chief minister Devendra Fadnavis may likely to take a call on the future of the raids which are now conducted by Thane cops as the gravity and span of the actions seem to be fast widening at a rate which may soon start proving cumbersome for a city-based unit.
Amid the rumour of the action likely to be soon handed over to the state Criminal investigation department (CID), Director general of police (DGP) Satish Mathur refused any such chance as of now.
The rumour has been intensified by the fact that many of the petrol pumps raided by the Thane cops, including in city (Rabjyot Automobiles at Mankapur) and elsewhere like Dhanashri automobile in Saoner and at Arni in Yavatmal, are owned by BJP leaders which have triggered the speculation of political inference.
The Vidarbha petroleum dealers association, which though have appreciated the action of the cops on their erring members on Monday at a petrol pump has claimed that some of the owners have been victimized by the action.
In an earlier press conference at Thane, the petrol pump owners of the western Maharashtra too had claimed of police high-handedness against them.
The city-based association has also claimed that Saoner’s Dhanashri petrol pump was wrongly sealed by the Thane cops. The petrol pump owner of HPCL’s SS Automobile at Friends colony also has claimed that their outlet had been shut down from several months but still they were acted upon with the Thane cops seizing fuel dispensing units and control cards.
DCP, Thane crime branch, Abhishek Trimukhe said that the actions have not being initiated arbitrarily but based on the information extracted during the interrogations of the accused and other suspects. “Initially we had arrested two owners where there was no doubt regarding their involvement in the tempering of the pulsars.
Later on, it had started trickling out during probes that managers and other staffers were the ones who were actually involved in the tempering keeping the owners in dark,” he said.
“We are not ruling out involvements of the owners behind rigging their petrol pumps but have decided to wait for the final reports from the government laboratories to put them behind bars,” said Trimukhe who is spearheading the raids.
Trimukhe also said that the present focus is on checking of the pumps before they can remove the chips. “Investigations and scrutiny are on simultaneously,” said the DCP claiming that his unit is almost entirely devoted to the actions.
Mohd Shaheed Sharique, anti-adulteration consumer society, said that there was a committee formed to check malpractices at the petrol pump in 2007 under the instruction of high court but no action had followed. “The malpractices by the petrol pump is nothing new,” he said.
