Discuss the necessities and feasibility of online fuel delivery in India.
Refer - The Hindu
IAS Parliament 8 years
KEY POINTS
Necessities
· It reduces long queues in congested cities.
· Saves time for consumer.
· Helps refueling in remote areas.
· Increase digital transactions in the sector.
· Increase employment in new dimension.
· Ensure customer satisfaction.(Customer friendly measure)
Feasibility
· Enforcing safety measures would be difficult with door delivery facilities.
· (E.g.) Ban on lighting a cigarette at a petrol pump is easy, but not the same in home-delivery environment.
· LPG cylinder adulteration is not as easy, but it is relatively simple to do this in fuels like petrol and diesel.
· Regular checks by agencies for enforcing anti-adulteration is easier at petrol pumps, but it is much more difficult for home-delivery unit.
· Hoarding of petroleum products to influence pricing is possible.
· Smuggling of fuels from states where it is cheaper is possible.
· Petrol could be misused for making explosives and arson.
· Only special delivery vans with special pilfer-proof locks be used to ensure there is no tampering with the fuel.
· Agencies can ensure anti-adulterations by regular checks with the fuel delivery vans.
· Aadhaar card can be made mandatory for fuel delivery, which will avoid the fuel hoarding.
· Implementation of GST on petroleum products will maintain the fuel prices same across the nation, so that smuggling can be avoided.
