IMPHAL Oct 20: Just after the departure of the Union Secretary GK PIllai , petrol vendors opened shop and women selling fuel in front of petrol pumps can be seen again in the city after an interval of a few days.
It may be mentioned that, after a long spell and one day prior to the arrival of the Union Secretary, Manipur Police had raided several petrol vendors and displayed the seized fuel. Joint Secretary home(North East in Charge), Sambhu Singh who accompanied the union secretary conducted raids along with Manipur Police personnel at Sangakpham, Lamlong, Palace gate on October 18th and detected a black marketeering trail of Diesel and Petrol and also found small quantities of stored fuel , it seemed that the big racketeers already knew about the raid in advance.
After the news of the raid in the media, petrol vendors closed down shop since and women selling bottles of petrol in front of the gas stations could not be seen for the last few days.
‘You still have to stand for hours to get fuel in a petrol station ,and most of the time they are closed down. For now, it’s at least some consolation that when in a hurry one can buy petrol from the black market’, said Sanahanbi, an office goer to IFP. ‘You can’t say that there is an open sale of petrol in the state’, she added.
The Union Minister had stated in the development seminar that the sale of petrol in the black market was unacceptable and release of fuel to the public should be transparent. He had further announced that sale of fuel will resume normally within a week’s time.
