OMCs, fuel dealers fight out sharing of personal data of one million staff

The battle between petroleum dealers and oil marketing companies has intensified, with the former coming out in public against the use of petrol pumps for government campaigns and seeking of personal data of over a million people working at petrol pumps across the country.

The Consortium of Indian Petroleum Dealers (CIPD) said the oil companies have threatened to choke supply, if they are not ready to provide sensitive data of their employees. “The data sought include information on their religion, caste, voting constituency, Aadhaar, bank account numbers, PAN numbers and number of family members. This is a breach of privacy, as they are not government employees,” said Uday Lodh, vice-president of CIPD.

Though OMCs have sought the data to profile them for skill development, petrol pump owners said this could be misused. Moreover, pump owners allege that they were asked to put the pictures of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in every retail outlet, in addition to the advertisements and hoardings that oil companies place at the pumps. “Hoardings are put at petrol pumps to publicise government schemes and products of companies. We don’t have any problem as majority of outlets are company-owned and are dealer-operated,” he added.

According to data available with the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell in July, there are 63,088 fuel retail outlets in India. Of this, 27,229 pumps are under Indian Oil Corporation, 14,496 under Bharat Petroleum Corporation and 15,151 by Hindustan Petroleum Corporation. The remaining outlets are owned by private sector players — including 1,400 by Reliance Industries, 4,692 by Nayara Energy (formerly known as Essar oil), 114 by Shell and six by others.

“Through the advertisements for government campaigns with political intent, OMCs are losing huge revenue, as majority of these outlets are in prime localities,” said a member of All India Petroleum Dealers’ Association.