AGARTALA, August 12 (TIWN): Irritated by prolonged LPG crisis and unscheduled delivery, consumer of Ashirbadh Agency on Wednesday blocked the National Highway at Dhaleshwar raising protest against the acute crisis of LPG cylinder.Fed-up with the crisis of LPG cylinder issue and not getting cylinder from the month of June, the consumers on Wednesday staged protest from morning 8 am. The protest continued for around 3 hours throwing traffic out of gear in large parts of National Highway. The protestor demanded to change the owner of the agency. They further alleged that the staffs of the agency ask the consumers to buy cylinders from black market which will cost around Rs. 1300 or more. They consumers alleged that as the staff of the agency is getting some commission from the black market as for which they are asking to take LPG cylinder from the black market. The consumers further said that the Government has been repeatedly claiming that every house will get 12 LPG cylinders in a year but the present scenario is different. Neither is the supply of LPG cylinders are adequate nor the Government is taking any initiatives to improve the LPG crisis.

The consumers who had gathered to collect refill cylinders at the Ashirbadh Gas agency were told that there was no LPG cylinder in the store. Upon this the consumers who were waiting since morning in long queues started to protest.

They also alleged that due to black-marketing of domestic gas cylinders the shortage has been self created by the agency holders.

However, it is worthy to mention that though most of the houses in the city are avail with the PNG connection still the families which are dependent n LPG cylinder are facing acute crisis.

Besides, the unruly attitude of CITU is disturbing the smooth bottling of cooking gas cylinders at Bisalgarh bottling plant for last many days.

Acute crisis of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) cylinder is still continuing in Tripura, triggering huge backlog.

The total number gas agencies are being increased to 46 while the main gas bottling plant in Bishalghar is unable to cope with the ongoing cylinder demands.

Such at situation, the rampant black marketing of LPG cylinders have gripped the state alarmingly.

Allegedly, there is no proper bottling of gas at Bishalgarh allegedly due to the dirty politics of the CITU. Weekly, there should be bottling of 1 lakh cylinder in an average rate.