• Higher failure rate than oil companies and the government.

• The Society for Petroleum laboratory (SFPL) initially detected a failure rate of 8.3 per cent in the petrol samples CSE had picked up in Delhi. But CSE found out that the government had not yet amended the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) standards in light of a Supreme Court order that mandated 1 per cent benzene in petrol for Delhi. When re-analysed on the basis of this correction, the failure rate for petrol samples shot up to 30 per cent.

• Fuel sampling protocol is violated, compromising test samples.

• Fuel quality standards actually cushion adulteration. The amount of adulterant a fuel can take can be calculated, so the tampered fuel can still meet the lax BIS specifications. For instance 91 octane petrol can be adulterated with 15 percent low aromatic naphtha and still meet the minimum limit of 88 octane.

• The government has not cared to develop alternative and advanced test methods for accurate confirmation of adulteration. CSE's own study, with gas chromatography, mapped out the individual hydrocarbon composition of the fuel samples from retail outlets. This