Aggravating the LPG crisis, some distributor agencies of the Indian Oil Corporation(IOC) appear to be ignoring the queue system and supplying the cylinders to their more favoured customers.
The transparency portal of the IOC shows that while one consumer, Swaraj got his cylinder the same day(October 10) that he booked it with the Chittoorappan Indane Services in Chittoor, several cylinders booked in August remained undelivered. In fact one cylinder booked on September 1 was delivered on October 8 , the portal reveals.
“It was only after those who had booked cylinders on September 4 protested before the office of the agency that they got them,” said a customer, alleging that the particular agency was delivering cylinders early only to customers who had booked them through its sub-agent.
Athough the unhappy consumers got their cylinders finally on October 20, precisely 10 days after the October 10 delivery to Mr Swaraj, the automatic response system of the IOC continued to maintain that the agency had last delivered an LPG cylinder on August 23.
“This makes it hard to assess the backlog pending with different agencies on the transparency portal,” complain the fed up consumers.