Keep mobiles off, but why?

Twenty-four-year old Neel Kapoor zooms into the petrol pump on Park Street. He’s planning his evening, and trying to get as many friends as possible to come over to his place. He gets a rude shock when the man filling the petrol tank of a car snaps at him in rusty Hindi asking him to switch off his mobile phone.
Neel agrees. But not businessman Suresh Agarwal who asks for the owner of the pump to explain why he should keep his phone off when he might be receiving important business calls during that time.“I really didn’t have an answer,� said Darshan Sanghvi, who owns the petrol pump at the Theatre Road crossing. In fact, owners of most of the city’s larger petrol pumps complain that though oil companies have put up a ‘stop’ logo on the use of mobile phones on the pump premises, the dealers have no clue why this ban has been imposed. “No one knows who set the standards and how it came in. Bharat Petroleum started this in their pumps and the other oil companies followed suit,� said Sanghvi who till date hasn’t received the literature from his oil company explaining the harm that might be caused by the use of a mobile phone on pump premises. “When we ourselves aren’t sure of the implications of the use of a mobile phone in a pump, what can we explain to the customers?� Sanghvi asks.
Gautam Jain, owner of a petrol pump near Rabindra Sadan and a dealer of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited, however says they were given a verbal explanation as to why mobile phones ought to be banned. “We were told they set off a spark which might ignite the area,� said Jain. Meanwhile, among the petrol pump dealers’ association and oil companies, the game of passing the buck is under way. “It falls upon oil companies to ensure safety at pumps, what can we do?� asked a senior official of the association. Oil companies themselves have no answer. “People in India do a lot of things knowing that it’s wrong, it’s impossible for us to stop everyone,� said the PRO of Indian Oil Corporation. Both HPCL and BPCL officials agree they do not have any special plans to enforce the rule.
himika.chaudhuri@timesgroup.co