Fresh in the league of fuel policing is Chhattisgarh association’s order of refusing fuel refill for two wheelers coming with riders not wearing helmets. Earlier we saw the Delhi government refusing fuel to diesel vehicles more than 10 years old and petrol vehicles more than 15 years old. Be it political or road safety, fuel is the vehicle of control.
The government is looking for short cuts. Fuel is an easy point of assembly and absolute control, because it’s an absolute monopoly. Suddenly fuel stations would become police and magistrates. They would determine illegality and penalty. They may then exercise discretion for a premium.
This is oversimplification of the problem. While targeting pollution, it is not deemed necessary to note that hardly 10% of the vehicles would be older than the limits, or that they would continue to operate outside Delhi or even that they have passed pollution tests.
When it’s targeting road traffic accidents, it is immaterial that two wheelers operate predominantly locally, within town limits, with limited speeding chances. Traffic and road conditions don’t allow it. Helmets of any specification is okay, often tokenized, they offer no protection, but controlling their sales, and enforcement of usage is difficult to control, fuel is easy. Roads cave in, get flooded due to poor drainage, poor lighting, invisible potholes all result in accidents. Fuel control is a nice token measure, that would disrupt normal life, and therefore make for news and common discourse.
Half of the toll plazas have people sit ins and protests going on, even the newly inaugurated UER II is facing protests over toll, 345 rupees per use, incity usage having such high tolls are violative of fundamental rights. The NHAI still has debt of over 4 trillion rupees.
Outsourcing such enforcement to poor fuel station operators is also violative of public order. They are already one of the highest revenue collectors, perhaps more than the IRS officers, with almost 2/3rd of the price being taxes. Add to it the ethanol blending hoax, which has meant a 20% inflation of fuel prices for the commuter. After all this he has to face the indignation of being refused fuel.
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