The police have instructed the petrol pump owners to keep a record of all Nepalese vehicles. The petrol pumps in border towns have been also instructed to supply only a limited quantity of petrol to Nepalese vehicles and keep the records of supplied fuel, besides the name and number of the vehicles. Public transport has been severely disrupted and buses running on Nepal’s mountainous provincial roads are dangerously overloaded. In front of fuel pumps in the mountains, scores of buses alongside earthmoving equipment and other heavy vehicles are lined up along the narrow roads, awaiting fuel. Fuel is not the only affected commodity. Cooking gas cylinders, also from India, and some food items are in short supply too, prompting many small restaurants to close. More upmarket eateries have curbed their menu choices and their hours. Many families are resorting to electric cookers or even cooking on firewood. The crisis shows no signs of abating. Tensions between India and Nepal escalated this week, when Nepalese security forces, attempting to clear protesters from the Nepal-India “friendship bridge”, shot and killed a young man who was subsequently identified as an Indian.
