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• State minister for food and civil supplies Anil Deshmukh on Tuesday summoned a meeting of the public sector oil companies to sort out increasing complaints about irregular supply of domestic cooking gas cylinders. He instructed the officials to ensure that supplies were streamlined within a week. He asked the companies to seek increased quota to clear all bookings.Deshmukh told reporters that as per the data given by the oil companies Hindustan Petroleum (HPCL) had a 75% market share accounting for 5.5 lakh domestic gas connections in the city and another 50,000 in the district. The refills are supplied through their network of 22 dealers.

• The company officials admitted that there were some constraints but agreed to correct the situation in a week. Similarly Bharat Petroleum (BPCL) caters to 1.9 lakh customers through 14 dealers and the Indian Oil ( IOC) has 80,000 connections in the district and 50,000 in city.

• Regarding complaints about blackmarketing of cooking cylinders and misuse by commercial users like hotels, restaurants and caterers, he said a joint operation by revenue, police and oil company officials would be carried out to check this. The domestic cooking gas priced at 425 a cylinder is heavily subsidized while the commercial one is priced at 1700.

• He said a meeting of all cooking gas dealers and officials would be convened soon to address issues like delay in supplies, compelling customers to buy stoves and accessories by the dealer while providing new connection.The officials also said that all customers were free to get a second cylinder on their old connections and that there was no rule that only one cylinder would be supplied per customer in a month."There is a chance of misuse of domestic gas by commercial users and so we ask for some time gap between booking of two cylinders," said a HPCL official but he agreed there was no bar on booking second refill within a month.

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