AGARTALA, January 15 (TIWN): Fuel crisis continues to suffer the state despite arrival of 27 petrol tankers from Guwahati. Five out of six major petrol pumps of Agartala city were found hanging ‘No Petrol’ notices since this morning. Long queue was found waiting front of Nabarun Petroleum Agency and few other petrol pumps in the vicinity of Agartala, giving rise to large scale black-marketing of oil.

 The crisis started around a week back after the central filling station of petrol and diesel at Betkutchi in Guwahati. The station had 2-3 days shortfall which affected many states of the region that had petrol supplies from it.

Finance minister Bhanu Lal Saha said that the crisis would be solved shortly. 27 petrol tankers would be arriving within Wednesday morning.

Though the tankers came on schedule, petrol pumps were found to be still closed, raising confusion among the public.

Meanwhile, petrol crisis has hit the state capital and sub-divisional headquarters. Vehicle users of the city have been facing an unprecedented crisis following the unavailability of fuel in most of the petrol pumps, catering to the requirement of motorists of the city and its surrounding areas.

Speaking to TIWN, a motorcyclist – Dibyojyoti Das said he was waiting in front of a petrol pump in the city for two hours and he was given 2 litres of petrol.

The upper limit in allowing fuel was known to be a process for controlling illegal hoarding of oil.

Outside in the black-market petrol was available at Rs. 100 to 150 per liter but that is also adulterated with kerosene. Most of the filling stations have put the board of no petrol but actually there is oil.

Owners of vehicles are facing great difficulties in obtaining fuel. They are forced to spend their days from the early morning onwards waiting in long queues in front of the petrol stations to get fuel. However, the state government has announced to provide locomotive fuel through rationing system in the wake of petrol crisis in Agartala city and other sub-divisional headquarters. The state government would sanction 2 liters for small vehicles and 5 liters would be allowed for big vehicles on a daily basis.