Rahul Gandhi calls E20 a 'big issue', says fuel destroying vehicles

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday called E20 a "big issue" and alleged that the blended fuel was stealing from people and destroying their vehicles.

He further alleged that "there is so much corruption" all over.

"This issue of E20 is a very big issue. Normally, we say 'daal mein kuchh kaala hai, magar ye daal hi kaali hai,'" the Congress leader said in a video on X.


"Brothers and sisters, this is a matter of sequencing. In any campaign, we have to decide the sequence of affairs. Our problem right now is that there is so much corruption that there is a huge line in what we have to sequence," he added.

The Leader of Opposition said the party would take the matter up "in a big way" because it is "destroying people's scooters, destroying people's lives, and literally is stealing directly from them."

His comments came a a time when Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri addressed concerns over ethanol-blended petrol, highlighting that India's fuel distribution network remained stable through recent market shocks.

Puri added that India's fuel retail network had remained fully resilient through recent global disruptions, addressing controversy around the E20 ethanol-blended petrol.

Responding to concerns raised after an industry body wrote to the government on 28 July, the oil minister said intensive testing had actually begun two weeks earlier.

Indian oil marketing companies collected around 2,000 samples daily from petrol stations nationwide using dedicated testing teams, he said, adding that out of India's 107,000 retail outlets serving six to seven crore customers a day only four contamination cases were found.