New Delhi: The Supreme Court on November 12 told the Union government that it would like to scrutinise allotment of petrol pumps and dealerships in petroleum products allegedly on political reasons while examining the legality of its decision to cancel all such allotments from January 2000.

Fixing December 11 for final hearing of the bunch of petitions challenging the government's decision to cancel the allotments, a Bench comprising justice Y K Sabharwal and justice H K Sema directed that some of the allotments "exposed by media" should be included within the sample cases to be taken into account by the court during the hearing.

"Solicitor General Kiriti Raval will mention as representative cases some of the allotments which were questioned and highlighted by the media," the Bench said.

When the Bench asked Raval whether the government had made any examination of the files before taking the decision to order wholesale cancellation, the Solicitor General said that a policy decision of this nature would not have been taken without some examination but added that he had no knowledge of the kind of examination done by the government.

However, he added that the government was ready to face any kind of inquiry and judicial examination to prove its bonafide in taking the decision.

"What the government has done is cancelled all. There would have been some cases, which would have been allotted fairly. Has the government taken the trouble of examining which are the cases in which it found favouritism was done?" the Bench asked.

PTI