India: Judgement Finally Made on 2002 Service Station License Cases

However, the apex court upheld the cancellation of 93 petrol pumps in different parts of the country. Tracing the history of the scam, the Bench of Justices C K Thakker and R V Raveendran recalled how questions were raised in Parliament after the Indian Express newspaper carried reports in August 2002, alleging that the BJP-ruled Government allocated license’s for servcie stations  and LPG distributorship to relatives and associates of political functionaries.

The then prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was forced to order the Petroleum Ministry to take steps to cancel all allotments made on the basis of recommendations of Dealer Selection Boards from January 2000 till that date. This resulted in the cancellation of 3,760 allotments, but several allottees challenged this decision in different high courts.

All these cases were eventually transferred to the apex court which on December 20, 2002, quashed the government order, except in regard to 413 cases, which were named in newspaper reports as being mired in irregularities.

Last week, accepting the report of a court-appointed committee set up to examine the remaining 409 cases (five were repetitions), the Bench said, “The approval by the Committee with respect to 112 allotments is accepted and the cancelling of allotments in those cases is set aside.”

However, 297 cases were not found to be allotted on the basis of merit but due to political favouritism. The Bench proceeded to cancel 93 such allotments spread across states including Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra.

Some other cases were found to be on the “borderline” by the court, and taking a lenient view of about 40 such allotments, the apex court ordered the setting aside of their cancellation.

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