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By:

Quaid Najmi

4 January 2025 at 3:26:24 pm

Commercial LPG 'evaporates' in Maharashtra

Mumbai : The short supply of commercial LPG cylinders turned ‘grim’ on Wednesday as hundreds of small and medium eateries – on whom the ordinary working Mumbaikars depend on for daily meals – shut down or drastically trimmed menus, on Wednesday.   With an estimated 50,000-plus hotels, restaurants and small food joints, the crunch is beginning to be felt severely, said Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Association of India (FHRAI) vice-president and Hotel and Restaurant Association Western...

Commercial LPG 'evaporates' in Maharashtra

Mumbai : The short supply of commercial LPG cylinders turned ‘grim’ on Wednesday as hundreds of small and medium eateries – on whom the ordinary working Mumbaikars depend on for daily meals – shut down or drastically trimmed menus, on Wednesday.   With an estimated 50,000-plus hotels, restaurants and small food joints, the crunch is beginning to be felt severely, said Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Association of India (FHRAI) vice-president and Hotel and Restaurant Association Western India (HRAWI) spokesperson Pradeep Shetty.   “We are in continuous touch with the concerned authorities, but the situation is very gloomy. There is no response from the Centre or the Ministry of Petroleum on when the situation will ease. We fear that more than 50 pc of all eateries in Mumbai will soon down the shutters. The same will apply to the rest of the state and many other parts of India,” Shetty told  ‘ The Perfect Voice’ .   The shortage of commercial LPG has badly affected multiple sectors, including the hospitality and food industries, mass private or commercial kitchens and even the laundry businesses, industry players said.   At their wits' ends, many restaurateurs resorted to the reliable old iron ‘chulhas’ (stoves) fired by either coal or wood - the prices of which have also shot up and result in pollution - besides delaying the cooking.   Anticipating a larger crisis, even domestic LPG consumers besieged retail dealers in Mumbai, Pune, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Ratnagiri, Kolhapur, Akola, Nagpur to book their second cylinder, with snaky queues in many cities. The stark reality of the 12-days old Gulf war with the disturbed supplies has hit the people and industries in the food supply chains that feed crores daily.   “The ordinary folks leave home in the morning after breakfast, then they rely on the others in the food chain for their lunch or dinner. Many street retailers have also shut down temporarily,” said Shetty.   Dry Snacks A quick survey of some suburban ‘khau gullies’ today revealed that the available items were mostly cold sandwiches, fruit or vegetable salads, cold desserts or ice-creams, cold beverages and packed snacks. Few offered the regular ‘piping hot’ foods that need elaborate cooking, or charging higher than normal menu rates, and even the app-based food delivery system was impacted.   Many people were seen gloomily munching on colorful packets of dry snacks like chips, chivda, sev, gathiya, samosas, etc. for lunch, the usually cheerful ‘chai ki dukaans’ suddenly disappeared from their corners, though soft drinks and tetrapaks were available.   Delay, Scarcity  Maharashtra LPG Dealers Association President Deepak Singh yesterday conceded to “some delays due to supply shortages” of commercial cylinders, but assured that there is no scarcity of domestic cylinders.   “We are adhering to the Centre’s guidelines for a 25 days booking period between 2 cylinders (domestic). The issue is with commercial cylinders but even those are available though less in numbers,” said Singh, adding that guidelines to prioritise educational institutions, hospitals, and defence, are being followed, but others are also getting their supplies.   Despite the assurances, Shetty said that the current status is extremely serious since the past week and the intermittent disruptions have escalated into a near-total halt in supplies in many regions since Monday.   Adding to the dismal picture is the likelihood of local hoteliers associations in different cities like Pune, Palghar, Nagpur, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, and more resorting to tough measures from Thursday, including temporary shutdown of their outlets, which have run out of gas stocks.

Ballot Blame

Rahul Gandhi’s political compass has long oscillated between self-righteous indignation and strategic incoherence. This past week, he veered yet again into conspiracy-laced territory by alleging that the Maharashtra Assembly poll in November last year was ‘rigged’ to favour the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). His claims, published in an op-ed in a reputed English daily and reiterated across social media, are as reckless as they are repetitive. They expose a stubborn refusal to reckon with electoral reality and an unwillingness to do the hard work of political introspection.


The Election Commission of India (ECI) responded sharply, calling Gandhi’s claims completely absurd and unsubstantiated. It issued a detailed, point-by-point rebuttal backed by hard data which underscored, among other things, how the Congress’ polling agents had raised no concerns on voting day and that additions to the electoral rolls were in line with standard revision cycles. The ECI had dealt with the same accusations in a public reply in December 2024. However, Gandhi, unfazed by facts or institutional process, dismissed the ECI’s reply as ‘evasive’ and has now demanded CCTV footage from polling booths while insinuating that what happened in Maharashtra could repeat in Bihar later this year. His latest assault on India’s electoral process is both intellectually hollow and politically graceless.


This is political petulance of an extreme nature. Rahul Gandhi’s persistent charges of ‘match-fixing’ reveal a familiar pattern. When his party wins, the electoral system is sound. When it loses, the system is suddenly corrupted. The Opposition’s performance in the Assembly polls was dismal, with the MVA managing to secure just 46 of 288 seats, compared to the BJP-led Mahayuti’s commanding tally of over 230. Faced with this sobering verdict, Gandhi has opted to play the arsonist rather than the analyst. Instead of diagnosing organisational failure, regional disunity or candidate mismatch, he blames the scoreboard.


This tactic of cloaking the Congress’s decline in the comforting fog of victimhood does no service to a party sinking daily into the abyss of irrelevance. More worrying is the casual manner in which Gandhi casts aspersions on the Election Commission’s autonomy. If he indeed had any specific booth-level evidence of rigging, he ought to have submitted it to the Commission, not aired them as media innuendos months after the event.


The Congress’s refusal to acknowledge that the election was lost not at the ballot box but on the ground, where the BJP’s voter outreach vastly outpaced its fragmented rivals, speaks volumes about its puerile leadership.


The job of the Leader of the Opposition is not to cry foul with every loss but to rebuild a credible alternative. That requires being serious about policy and reviving the cadre, not continually peddling lazy and tired conspiracy theories. Rahul Gandhi’s political instincts seem permanently trapped in grievance mode. Until he learns that democracy is not a game to be won only on his terms, he will remain less a leader of the Opposition and more a loudspeaker for lost causes.

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