New Delhi: With the falling rupee and rising oil import bills fuelling the current account deficit, the petroleum ministry is planning to do away with 24-hour petrol pumps in cities, Minister M Veerappa Moily said here. “It (petrol pump timings) could be 8am to 8pm or something like that. We are still working on it. It may not be implemented on the highways though. Such measures are already in place in many other countries,” a leading daily reported Moily as saying. “We need to discipline ourselves. People will have to tighten their belt and some austerity measures have to be taken without affecting economic activity,” Moily added. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has asked the petroleum ministry to save $25bn on imports and the ministry hopes to contain fuel demand through such an austerity measure. The petroleum minister had on Tuesday said the oil ministry has worked out a plan to save $22bn in the oil import bill.
Soldier’s body found after 45 years
SHIMLA: The body of a soldier who died in a plane crash 45 years ago has been found in the Himalayas and will be given a military funeral, the army said yesterday. A team found the soldier’s body, still wearing a uniform with personal identification documents in the pocket, on August 22 -- more than four decades after he and 101 others died when an army transport aircraft crashed in February 1968. The man, identified as Jagmail Singh, came from Meerpur village in Haryana state south of the Himalayas, an army spokesman said. “Bad weather hasn’t allowed us to fly the body home yet for a military funeral,” he said. The remains were recovered at an altitude of 18,000 feet on the Dhakka glacier in Himachal Pradesh state.
Over five million hit
by Bihar floods
Patna: There was no let up in the fury of floods in over a dozen Bihar districts yesterday with major swollen rivers, including the Ganga, affecting more than five million people, officials said. According to the state government, the toll in floods this year has gone up to 132. “Major rivers, including the Ganga, Sone, Budhi Gandak, Kosi and Gandak, are not showing receding trend so far, a bad news for hundreds of thousands of people affected by floods,” said an official of the central water commission. In Patna, the Ganga was flowing above the danger mark.
IANS
