Deshmukh For Legal Action Against Naik

The Maharashtra minister for food and civil supplies Anil Deshmukh today threatened legal action against Union petroleum minister Ram Naik for having claimed that he had been allotted a petrol pump in his name at Parshivni road in Nagpur.

"Having listened to the honourable Union minister, I have come to realise that obviously the information of allottees provided by his ministry was inaccurate. I have learnt that the named petrol pump is registered in the name of the Hindustan Petroleum Corporation. Within the next eight days, the Union petroleum ministry should correct its mistake or allot the pump in my name as they have stated," Deshmukh said.

He clarified that neither he or any of his relatives owned a single petrol pump. Dwelling on the petrol pump scandal, Deshmukh said that in Maharashtra, of the 61 petrol pumps allotted to private individuals, 90 per cent were BJP or RSS functionaries.

"Even the original chairwoman of the Nagpur selection committee, retired judge Ratna Parkhi, had resigned from her post following pressure from the Union petroleum ministry to favour certain applicants. She was replaced by M L Somanwar, who is a practising lawyer. Therefore, Naik's claim that only retired judges held the post of chairpersons in the selection committees that controlled the allotments of petrol pumps is also not true. Moreover, many of the retired judges chairing, many of these selection committees had earlier contested the elections on a BJP ticket," Deshmukh said.