M A I N   N E W S

Punjab vehicles come to halt
Ajay Banerjee
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 8
The owners of petrol stations here virtually applied the brakes on hundreds of official vehicles of the Punjab Government today. The state government had defaulted on the clearance of pending dues running into lakhs of rupees, forcing the owners to withdraw the credit facility.

Today, several official cars were parked outside the Secretariat here as their fuel tanks had run dry. However, vehicles of boards and corporations were not affected as these deal separately with petrol station owners.

Sources in the Punjab Government confirmed that fuels bills of the petrol stations operated by the Chandigarh Industrial Tourism Corporation (CITCO) here had not been cleared. The outstanding dues totalled nearly Rs 15 lakh. Last week, CITCO, a semi-government unit of the Chandigarh Administration, told the Punjab Government that the pending bills needed to be cleared or else there would be no refuelling of vehicles. A petrol station run by a private party had also refused refuelling to Punjab Government cars as their bills totalling Rs 12 lakh were pending.

The sources said the drivers of vehicles were told today that refuelling would be done only on a cash basis. Normally, the drivers get fuel by signing a voucher at the petrol station. The owner of the petrol station then sends a bill and payment is made through cheque. In the past few months the Punjab Government had tied up with CITCO to meet its fuel requirements.

The clearing of bills is itself not easy. Even though the Punjab Government may want to clear the dues, it cannot. A court has attached the specific ‘‘head of account’’ in the Chief Secretary's office that pays for administrative expenses. The court, while hearing a case relating to the payment of compensation for land acquisition, had attached the account nearly two months ago. This resulted in the ‘‘freezing’’ of all payments of the government.

This account was temporarily opened in the last week of October to pay the salaries of employees.

Since September, when the accounts had been frozen, travel allowance bills and loans from the provident fund accounts of employees had been affected. Today, when the vehicles stopped, the government asked its legal teams to seek redress from court. The ‘‘head of account’’ of the Chief Secretary will have to be released through court.

A senior official said till then the vehicles might have to be run using funds provided though the contingency account or by tapping the fuel reserves of the Punjab Police. The Chandigarh Administration could also be approached to ask CITCO to relax its credit policy for a few days.