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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.

Konkan’s Conundrums


Konkan’s Conundrums

As the countdown to November 20 grows louder, all eyes are on Raigad district in the Konkan, which has become a classic microcosm of Maharashtra’s shifting political alignments in wake of the splits within the Shiv Sena in 2022 and the NCP in July 2023.


In the Assembly segments of Shrivardhan and Mahad, the prestige of tall regional leaders is on the line. At the heart of the Shrivardhan contest is Aditi Tatkare, the incumbent MLA from the ruling Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and daughter of Raigad MP Sunil Tatkare.


The Minister for Women and Child Development in the ruling Mahayuti, she successfully held the constituency – a Tatkare family borough – in the 2019 Assembly polls, overcoming fierce competition and the historical dominance of the then undivided Shiv Sena in the area.


The darkest cloud on Aditi’s horizon has been Bharat Gogawale, the vocal whip of CM Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena who, hitherto, had been the fiercest opponent of taking the Ajit Pawar-led NCP into the Mahayuti’s bandwagon. Gogawale had vociferously opposed Aditi’s appointment as Raigad’s Guardian Minister last year. The edge to Gogawale’s anger was made keener when he did not get a ministerial berth in the Mahayuti cabinet expansion – all the more reason for him to channelize his spleen on Aditi Tatkare.


Yet, after more than a year, tempers appear to have cooled for the sake of strategic objectives. Aditi has said that Gogawale and the Shinde Sena did aid in her father’s victory in the Lok Sabha election.


Gogawale, himself no mean satrap, is seeking re-election for the fourth consecutive time from the neighbouring Assembly segment of Mahad. ‘Bharat sheth’ – as he is popularly known – claims that the Mahayuti will claim all Assembly seats in Raigad, implying that the schism between himself and the Tatkares are bygone.


CM Shinde’s pacification of his party colleague came in form of Gogawale’s appointment as Chairman of the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC), with a bid to kill two birds with one stone: give his Shiv Sena greater leverage in local constituencies, especially in the coastal Konkan region and make sure allies within the Mahayuti, that is his party and the NCP work as smoothly as possible.


All that said, the key question remains whether the Tatkare family’s political legacy can endure the test of factionalism and changing alliances and whether the Sena and the NCP have campaigned as wholeheartedly for each other as they claim.


Meanwhile, Guhagar Assembly segment in Konkan’s Ratnagiri is shaping up to be a humdinger: Uddhav Thackeray’s point man, the mercurial Bhaskar Jadhav, who is seeking a fourth term as the MVA’s (SS-UBT) candidate, is up against a determined coalition of ruling BJP-Shiv Sena forces who have propped Rajesh Bendal, a former municipal council president of Guhagar.


Shinde’s Shiv Sena, which zeroed on Bendal, himself from the Ajit Pawar-led NCP, has solicited the aid of former BJP MLA Vinay Natu who was an eager aspirant for the Mahayuti ticket for the Guhagar seat. However, the nomination ultimately went to Bendal, with the approval of Natu, though. The Mahayuti this time is hell-bent on supplanting Jadhav. November 23 will tell whether their efforts succeed.

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