Petroleum minister M Veerappa Moily has a knack to make government decisions ineffective without reversing them as he demonstrated when he was chief minister of Karnataka (though his term was cut short by the infamous "Moily tapes").

Without going back to the union cabinet or the cabinet committee on political affairs (CCPA) to review the decision to limit the subsdisied domestic LPG cylinders to maximum six per consumer per year, he is coaxing the state-run oil companies not to put in practice the new system until they have completed the "know your customer" (KYC) formalities.

On getting hints from the Congress leadership to do something about the LPG ceiling lest it becomes an issue in the 2014 elections, a clever Moily has pulled up the oil companies for creating confusion among the customers so much so that they were not able to receive even their due share of the subsidised cylinders.

He had a meeting on Tuesday with the petroleum secretary, who is just back from abroad, and told him to unofficially ask the oil companies not to harass the consumers and allow them the subsidised gas as usual. He was quite clear that he does not complaints particularly during the current festival season.

Sources in the petroleum ministry said Moily wants free flow of the subsidised cylinders for the time being on the ground that he is reworking the overall subsidy architecture to increase their allowed quota but it may take time and the consumer should not suffer just because modalities of subsidised and non-subsidised at the dealer's end are still not streamlined.