Published Jul 01, 2026 | 7:54 PM ⚊ Updated Jul 01, 2026 | 7:54 PM
Attorney General R Venkatramani.
Synopsis: First came a hearing. Then came a denial. Then came the viral clip. The Attorney General’s ethanol blending experiment quote is now taking a life of its own…
Did the Attorney General tell the Supreme Court on June 30 that the Government’s 20% Ethanol Blended Petrol programme was “an ongoing experiment” and that “the impact of the policy would become clearer by next year”?
The office of the Attorney General had on Tuesday dismissed all reports that he had done so before the apex court.
“The government is trying to experiment with 20% ethanol blending. We will have results of that by next year,” the reports from the SC had quoted Venkataramani as saying. His office, in its clarification issued at around 9:30 pm through a Press Information Bureau press release, debunked the quote as “completely false” and not “even close to the actual submissions made before the Hon’ble Court.”
If the mandarins of PIB and the Attorney General’s office thought they had doused the fire they had lit with that response and slept peacefully, they had another thing coming.
On Wednesday, a clip of the Attorney General caught on camera saying precisely what his office had denied went viral on social media. Now, many are demanding an apology from the Press Information Bureau of India for lying through their teeth.
“The government is trying to experiment with 20% ethanol blending. We will have results of that by October next year,” Venkatramani can be seen saying in the clip.
“The perils of lying in the face of live streaming,” said X user Nachiket Deshpande, among those who posted the video.
“Will you apologise, PIB India?” Tehseen Poonawala of the Congress asked.
“Now we need a fact checker to fact check the government fact checker,” another user noted.
“Everyone is a guinea pig in India”, “A government of liars, for liars and by liars”, and “Shame, shame, shame for lying and damaging our car and reducing the fuel economy of all vehicles” were among the other responses on X.
The Attorney General’s gaffe comes at a time when PM Modi has been championing Ethanol blending. Posters hailing the benefits of the programme can be found across petrol bunks.
As recently as on March 26, the Prime Minister at the inauguration of the Noida International Airport in Jewar had spoken of how “(Ethanol blending) has significantly reduced the country’s dependence on crude oil. We would have had to import an additional 4.5 crore barrels of crude annually if it weren’t for blending.”
The Attorney General had been appearing for the Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) in the Special Leave Petition that challenged a Karnataka High Court order, which he argued would destabilise the Centre’s E20 policy.
(Edited by R Rajesh Kumar.)
