Cuttack, March 11: The wheels of police patrolling vehicles here have stopped rolling, thanks to unpaid fuel bills at petrol pumps.

The police control room (PCR) vans have been gathering dust at police stations for the past 15 days.

Sources said PCR vehicles in four of the six zones under Cuttack-Bhubaneswar police here got refills from Santosh Kumar and Co. petrol pump located on Link Road. In all, there are 19 PCR vans engaged in patrolling the city. Apart from the PCR vans in Choudwar, Kandarpur and Chauliaganj, all others are lying idle.

Officials of Santosh Kumar and Co. said they had stopped fuel supply to police vehicles, including PCR vans, because arrears to the tune of Rs 25 lakh hadn’t been paid for the period December 2012 to February this year.

“We have already stopped providing fuel to vehicles under the Cuttack DCP since last month because bills to the tune of Rs 24.82 lakh haven’t been paid,” said petrol pump manager Ramesh Nayak. He said there had been a similar delay in payment of bills submitted earlier.

Nonetheless, he said that on the request of senior officials they had provided fuel during the Women’s World Cup matches in the city. However, no steps had been taken yet to clear the bills. Deputy commissioner of police Cuttack S. Praveen Kumar admitted to not paying the bills but refused to comment further.

Police sources said one PCR van was earlier entitled to get 40 litres of diesel for three to four days. However, because the dues hadn’t been paid, only 10 litres of fuel were provided to a PCR van in January. Usually, the cops pay fuel bills of Rs 10 lakh to Rs 12 lakh a month.

Those at the receiving end of this crisis are city residents who are being deprived of the services provided by PCR vans. “We had called the Purighat police station to tell them about a road accident victim lying near Ring Road. The cops arrived after an hour by motorcycle. By that time we had moved the injured person to a hospital in an autorickshaw,” said Dilip Prusty, a local resident.

The inspector in charge of a police station said on condition of anonymity that they were facing hardships in discharging their daily duties because of shortage of fuel. They were managing patrolling and other activities on motorcycles.

However, police commissioner Sunil Roy said: “Such things do happen at the end of every financial year and we have to make adjustments according to budgetary allocations. It is no longer a crisis as the matter has already been sorted out.”