The governing body of Kolkata’s Urbana residential complex sent out a message to all residents on the curtailment of pipeline gas supply to households, as the domestic LPG crisis deepened in the city. The rush of booking LPG cylinders has overwhelmed booking systems of oil marketing companies, with distributors reporting repeated server crashes due to the surge in refill requests. With digital booking systems becoming unreliable, a large number of consumers have started visiting distributor offices to place orders in person, resulting in long queues from early morning in many neighbourhoods. “This is panic buying,” said Bijan Biswas, spokesperson for the Indane LPG Distributors' Association in Bengal. “Any customer or vendor found to be buying gas on the black market, or hoarding gas cylinders will have their customer ID banned for further use,” said an official of Hindustan Petroleum.

Source: The Telegraph March 12, 2026 12:37 UTC