New adulteration laws to be the most stringent: Deora

New Delhi, July 19 (UNI) Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Murli Deora today said the renewed drive starting next week, to check adulteration in petrol across the country would be most stringent, with the offenders being strictly dault with.

''The offenders would be prosecuted in the court of law,'' Mr Deora said and added that the punishment would be at an unprecedented scale.

He admitted that the earlier attempts did not garner much posistive results but said there is more teeth in this campaign beginning next week.

The ministry has proposed third party certification of all retail outlets selling more than 100 kiloliters per month by 2007. It also plans to intensify surprise inspection by OMCs, rather than routine inspections of retail outlets as well as third party inspections of retail outlets by reputed agencies.

Earlier at the Consultative Committee meeting of his ministry, Mr Deora said that he would get a survey conducted by an independent agency to identify retail outlets selling less than 200 kiloliter per month, alongwith reasons for decline in throughput and deterioration of services.

The ministry also intends to introduce a global positioning system through satellite monitoring of all tank trucks by March next year.

"The OMCs would monitor the movement of all tank trucks, company owners dealers through GPS based vehicle tracking system," Mr Deora said.

UNI/RT RA PC1856