On the direction of Uttar Pradesh Govt, a Special Task Force (STF) conducted raids on several petrol pumps in the city of Lucknow. What was unearthed post the raid, was a multi-crore state-wide petrol pump scam. Yes. The 13 petrol pumps which were caught, had installed a remote controlled chip in the fuel pump machines.
What this chip used to do, is when it was activated, it would deliver lesser fuel as against what is shown on the fuel meter reading. So, a consumer would as to fill a liter of petrol, but what he or she was really getting was 900 ml, despite the meter showing 1 liter. This means, in the city of Lucknow alone, such petrol pumps were looting citizens by more than INR 15 lakh ever day.
Speaking about the fraud going on in UP, an officer from the STF stated – “A chip is inserted into these fuel dispensing machines mother boards that quickens the pulse rate for fuel dispensing.” These can be remotely controlled. So when they are dispensing fuel to consumers, they are switched on, and when there are checks by authority, the switch is turned off.
One of the petrol pump manager who has been arrested stated – “I used to switch on the remote myself each morning. When there were checks by the oil company, the remotes were switched off.”
The STF caught the one of the person associated with installing this remote-controlled chip, and found out that he has managed to sell such a chip to thousands of petrol pump stations across the state of Uttar Pradesh. In all, there are about 6,000 petrol pump stations in UP. This means that the STF needs to carry out more searches, across the state. But, there is one problem. The petrol pumps across the city of Lucknow, have now gone on strike. Why? They do not want the govt to interfere, and conduct raids.
The decision to go on strike is reportedly taken after 3 petrol pumps owned by the Chief of UP Petrol Pump Association, Mr B N Shukla were raided and locked down by STF for installing the chip. As one of our reader, Mr Sabharwal rightly puts, – “Petrol Pumps in Lucknow are on strike because government is running inspections. So it’s like all the students opposing the examination because of the presence of invigilator in the room.”
On top of this, there is now a report which states that there is a petrol pump in Lucknow which disappeared overnight. So here’s what happened. The owner of the petrol pump got to know that they are going to be raided by the STF team. Before the STF team arrived, the owner of the petrol pump managed to dislodge all the fuel dispensing machines and hid them in a storage vault. He then closed the petrol pump and put up a board saying – “Under Renovation”.
