AGARTALA, October 21 (TIWN): Agartala is experiencing an acute shortage of diesel for the past few days. Most of the petrol pumps are not having diesel. This has forced petrol pumps to ration the fuel and as a most of the commercial vehicles are steering out of business.

"Due to this diesel shortage, all my cars are getting stopped. My cars were taken on finance. Business is affected as drivers are unable to take the cars out due to lack of diesel,” said Ashim Sarkar. He is an owner of a travel agency and supplies vehicles for tour purpose.

However, for the past few days his vehicles have to wait for at least two hours every morning to get diesel.

The actual reason for the dry-out remains largely speculative. Especially, as the petrol pump owner have chosen to remain quiet.

This acute shortage has forced petrol pumps to ration the fuel. The city requires a total of 30,000 liters of diesel per day, said Deputy Director of Food Shekhar Lal Das.

It was reported that from the past few days all the petrol pumps of Agartala and other major cities has been witnessing a long queue for getting fuel morning to till night but many of them went back in empty tanks. Hundreds of vehicles were seen in queue in front of petrol filling station while many centers had hanged the board of no-diesel.

It is to be mentioned here that, earlier, a acute fuel crisis hits Tripura as fuel that comes to the state from Assam has been disrupt due to the continuous blockade of National Highway (NH) 44 in Meghalaya till September 28 last hit the stock of petroleum products of the state and by that time demand of petrol and diesel went up among the Durga puja revelers.