Lobbies terrorise a key minister, put up with our demands or else..., they threaten him, with “dire consequences” as crime reports in our newspapers love to put it. Upright beyond imagination, the minister stands firm: no way will I give in, you bad guys, he retorts. Men with guns and monsoon-like shower of bullets later, the hero, sorry minister, emerges from amid the smoke (of the bullet rain, what else), and shoots from the lips: “I am telling you that I do not succumb to any of these threats.”

Before you can say “dhan-ta-tan” like those Bachchan/Dharmendra/Feroze Khan/whoever-it-was seventies films, you realise it’s M Veerappa Moily, the union petroleum minister. No, don’t recoil. After all, barring the part about guns and bullets, it has the union oil minister all over it – that short scene.

“...there are other lobbies. They don't want us to stop imports. There are some lobbies who are working on that. Every minister is threatened many times. Every minister who occupies this position is threatened," Moily told reporters in New Delhi on Friday.

Now, unlike our archetypal hero, Moily does not want to name the baddies, and he is certainly not going to gun for them. At least he has made no indication toward that. Asked by reporters to name the names – of both the threat-makers and the threatened – Moily refused to name anyone or identify anyone who may have directly or indirectly threatened ministers.

But like our hero (if a movie is ever made on him, only George W Bush could play him to perfection), there was no shortage of bravado: "History will speak about it. It is for you to judge.”

Former petroleum minister Ram Naik of the BJP, however, tried to put a dampener on Moily’s heroics, saying no pressure was ever brought on him during his five-year tenure during the Vajpayee government, and asked Moily to name lobbies that brought pressure on him, or his predecessors – S Jaipal Reddy, Murli Deora and Mani Shankar Aiyar, reports in today’s newspapers said.

Now, shorn of the bluster and the attempt at comedy or heroics, Moily has made a serious enough charge: that there are people – “lobbies” or no lobbies – who are threatening the union minister against cutting the number of barrels of oil India imports. According to Atul Kumar Anjan of the CPI, those barrels cost India a record $160 billion in fiscal 2012-13, and are slated to go further up as the rupee takes a hit against the dollar.

So come out with the names, Mr Moily. It’s not that you are being threatened in your capacity as M Veerappa Moily. Any threat – and even a threat perceived – is made to the country’s petroleum minister. And since almost all of that $160 billion comes from our pocket – some also from Moily and his kin’s tax money – we bloody well deserve an answer. Because:

1. Are we actually spending more than is necessary on oil import?

2. Is there any truth in Moily’s bluster when he says he isn’t succumbing to pressures from such “lobbies”?

3. In case the answer to either/both questions is either a ‘yes’, or a ‘no’ or an ‘ummm, can’t say’, is there a chance to cut the oil imports and save the dollars?

4. If we are not doing enough oil/gas exploration, are we under-employing the chaps who are supposed to do that exploration, giving them a jolly good time to while away even as money is spent from the exchequer – our exchequer – for their upkeep?