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The government is planning to move the Supreme Court for transfer of all petitions challenging the prime minister's order to cancel allotment of over 3700 petrol pumps and gas dealerships either to itself or to the Delhi high court.
State-run oil companies, which have put a battery of lawyers on the job to study legal implications of cancelling all the allotments following allegations of favouritism in the award of some, have consulted former law minister Arun Jaitley on the issue, highly placed sources said.
"We would wait and watch the situation for some time before moving the Supreme Court," they said.
While the Chennai high court has issued notices to the government and oil companies on the order, high courts of Delhi and Rajasthan have stayed the applicability of the Centre's omnibus notification.
"We are expecting a flood of petitions, mostly on lines of those filed till now," they said, adding 'then we would move the Supreme Court for a consolidated hearing on all those as the grievance would be the same in all the petitions'.
Meanwhile, senior officials of Indian Oil, Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum are holding daily consultations with the petroleum ministry on the modalities of termination notices to be issued to allottees of petrol pumps and gas agencies since January 2000.
Oil companies are likely to begin issuing cancellation notices from Friday, sources said adding the compensation to be granted in lieu of cancellation is also being worked out.
As a prelude to the termination notices, Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum have already filed caveats in various high courts and the Supreme Court to prevent local courts from granting ex-parte stay on the cancellation of dealerships.
Stating that no legal notice has so far been issued, sources said oil companies which received the government directive to cancel all allotments of petrol pumps, gas agencies and kerosene dealerships made since January 2000 in 'public interest', are likely to complete legal consultations in a day or two.
Sources said the cancellation process could take up to 20 days to complete. The termination notice would give a month's time to the allottees before formally evicting them.
As a fallout of the cancellation order, 1740 petrol pumps, 1764 LPG agencies and 214 kerosene dealerships will be cancelled, Letters of Intent for which were issued between January 1, 2000 and August 5, 2002.
Arrangements are also being made by oil companies to either take over the operational pumps and agencies or appoint contractors till they are auctioned, they said adding no petrol pump or gas agency would be closed.
In the interim period to auction, all the operational pumps and agencies would continue to function on contract basis and petroleum products supplied as usual.
Complete Coverage of the Petrol Pump Row
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