Moily orders babus to clear pending cases

New Delhi (PTI): With indecision in past 2-3 years holding up billions of dollars of investment, Oil Minister M Veerappa Moily has ordered bureaucrats to clear pending cases or face action. Since early 2011, the Oil Ministry and its controlled committees approved several investment and other decisions pertaining to oil and gas exploration and production but the officials hadn't signed on orders or minutes of the meeting that formalised those decisions. The pending decisions include routine matters like nod for annual work programme and investments and critical matters like field development plans and approval of discoveries. Oil Ministry sources said there were situations where the oversight panel, called Management Committee, had taken a decision but it has not signed for nearly three years. Moily, they said, asked Vivek Rae, Secretary in his Ministry, to get all such pending cases cleared within one month. Some of the officers had left the Ministry but they were located and made to sign the files, sources said, adding that most of the pending cases have now been cleared and only one or two remain which too would be cleared soon.