BPCL's decision under law, no politics involved: Pradhan on Tej Pratap

Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan on Saturday said that the decision to cancel the licence of Bihar Health Minister Tej Pratap Yadav's petrol pump was under the law and that no politics was involved, hours after Bihar Deputy Chief Minister and the latter's brother Tejaswi Yadav called the cancellation a 'polictical vendetta.'

"I don't think that there is any politics involved in this matter. It might be possible that they (Tej Pratap Yadav) submitted some incomplete or false information which later on came in BPCL's attention," Pradhan said.

The licence was terminated because Tej Pratap failed to furnish a satisfactory explanation to the notice issued over the allocation of the property in the state.

However, the BPCL declined to further comment on the issue.

On May 31, the BPCL issued notice to Tej Pratap seeking an explanation on the petrol pump license.

The oil corporation sought Pratap's explanation on how he acquired the license and asked him to reply within 15 days.

The notice signed by BPCL Territory Manager (Retail), Patna, Manish Kumar followed a complaint that Yadav had acquired the petrol pump at Patna's busy Anisabad bypass road on the basis of wrong information furnished by him.

The notice is reportedly connected to senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Sushil Modi's allegations that the petrol pump had been fraudulently allotted to Tej Pratap during the UPA-II regime.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had alleged that Tej Pratap did not have the stipulated 43 decimal of land for setting up the petrol pump at the time of applying for it.

He added that it was in the year 2012, when beer-manufacturing baron Amit Katyal, managing director of the firm A. K. Infosystem Pvt Ltd leased out around 136 decimal of land to Lalu's younger son Tejaswi Yadav for setting up a petrol pump.