Petrol bunks in Krishna district functioned normally in spite of the strike call given by Andhra Pradesh Federation of Petroleum Traders. Following appeals by Collector M. Raghunandana Rao and Joint Collector J. Murali on Sunday night to not cause inconvenience to the public, all the petrol and diesel outlets remained open on Monday.
There was, however, panic buying at some petrol and diesel filling stations in the city due to TV reports that they would be closed from Monday, which led to some bunks running out of stocks very early.
A team of Legal Metrology Department led by Assistant Controller M. Venkata Rao and District Inspector Bhanu Prasad conducted raids on four retail outlets in the city on Sunday evening and booked cases against two of them for failing to comply with the rules under Legal Metrology Act, 2009.
However, the two cases were withdrawn after petroleum dealers took their grievance to the notice of Mr. Raghunandana Rao, who instructed the Joint Collector to sort out the issue.
The dealers argued that the onus of getting pumps and related equipment certified by the LMD was on the oil marketing companies and manufacturers of the pumps and other measuring devices.
‘Not at fault’ Consortium of Indian Petroleum Dealers’ Southern Region vice-president M. Narayana Prasad and Krishna District Petroleum Dealers’ Association president Ch. Narasimha Rao told Mr. Murali that they were not at fault.
If cases were to be booked for non-compliance, notices had to be actually sent to the OMC and manufacturers of pumps in the event of the equipment falling short of the technical standards which caused variations at the customer end.
