We haven’t seen the endgame of the petrol pump allotment scam this newspaper had exposed. The Supreme Court upholding on Friday the recommendations of the committee it had appointed is a huge step. It reinforces the incentives of applying due process in an area traditionally considered a fiefdom of discretion. Congress ministers had been questioned, reprimanded and penalised by the Supreme Court before our story proved the BJP was equally adept at playing the game. But the cancellation of 250-odd allotments, the chastening effect on politicians caught throwing around favours like confetti and the warning all this implies to ministers and babus, now and in the future, are not enough.As this newspaper has consistently argued the lesson to be learnt from our investigations was not so much that probity must guide allotment of scarce resources but that the system must be made discretion-proof. The Express story had resulted in allotment decisions being transferred from dealer selection boards — the hotbed of patronage — to oil PSUs. Now PSU general managers decide on allotments and they are supposed to work on a points system to pick ideal candidates. Anyone familiar with the Indian system will know this can be manipulated.Privatising retail oil sales could have been an answer. Had private gas stations taken off as a business enterprise, space for government discretion, which can only apply to PSU pumps, would have been less. But the oil retail policy is, first, burdened with ridiculously restrictive conditions. This has resulted in only a few big players like Reliance entering the business. Ideally, oil retail should have been an aam aadmi business proposition. Second, even the few big private players have to contend with differential pricing — PSU oil retails at subsidised prices, distorting the market and, of course, disincentivising private participation. The strike some time back by those operating some Reliance-owned gas stations — the protesters were arguing the price differential hurts their business — is a case in point. The petrol pump scam story will end only when oil retailing becomes a proper business.
