Gas Consumers of Makum Suffer Due to Ownership Dispute Over Gas Agency

Our Correspondent

TINSUKIA: The consumers of Oil Valley Gas Concern, the only LPG gas agency located at Gandhinagar Makum, have been facing extreme hardship since the past one decade after it was closed down following ownership dispute among the family members. A widow, one of the legal heirs, overcame all legal and administrative hurdles after her husband Dhananjay Borsaikia, the main owner of the gas agency, was proclaimed as dead by the court following his kidnapping by some armed miscreants from their Makum residence in 1999. He has remained missing ever since.

Speaking about her ordeal before the media persons at Tinsukia Press Club on Sunday, Biju Mahanta Borsaikia of Digboi said that from 1999 to 2004 she was allowed to continue the dealership till she was driven out from the house by her in-laws and had to move to her parents’ house at Digboi. She had been struggling for 15 years for survival and justice but her mother-in-law Bidhya Prabha Borsaikia (86) created impediments by not signing on papers related to opening of bank accounts and GST even as she signed other papers following directives from the court in which Bidhya Prabha Borsaikia and Bikrant Borsaikia, son of Dhananjay Saikia and Biju Mahanta Borsaikia, were made joint partners of the gas agency with equal share rights. Biju Mahanta Borsaikia further said that after she received approval from IOC authority, she invested quite a sum of money in repairing the godown and office but due to apathy of her in-laws, the gas consumers of Makum were made to suffer.