JOIN USThey might be on the opposite axis of the political divide, but Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar took a leaf out of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s book.
Sarkar’s government on Thursday implemented an ‘odd-even’ scheme for the distribution of petrol in the state to ration fuel due to a three-month acute fuel crisis in the communist-ruled state.
The state food and civil supplies department has asked the petrol stations to supply petrol with odd and even registration numbers on alternate days.
The state has been facing an acute crisis of fuel and LPG due to a 3-km stretch of the National Highway 8 on the Assam–Tripura border being turned into swampy marshy patches.
With over 3,000 trucks carrying essential commodities to Tripura being stuck, the state is left with the last brink of fuel and LPG reserves. The queues for the fuel are as long as 7 km and LPG cylinders are being sold in grey market as high as Rs 2,000 per cylinder.
“We thought that the odd-even formula worked well in Delhi for pollution control. Here, the crisis is different and we think this formula would help us deal with the crisis and put a check on black-marketing petroleum products in the state” Tripura food and civil supplies minister Bhanulal Saha told DH over phone from state capital Agartala.
The fuel stations in the state have been finding it difficult to cater to the long queues of people from morning till night every day for the past few weeks, besides dealing with congestion of roads everywhere.