For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young has launched a scathing at­tack on Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Dr Roodal Mooni­lal over his han­dling of the Bar­rack­pore oil leak, say­ing he feels “sor­ry” for him and ac­cus­ing him of be­ing “hap­less, in­com­pe­tent and com­plete­ly out of his depth” in in­ter­pret­ing what he in­sists was a rou­tine en­er­gy op­er­a­tion.

Young said what was be­ing pre­sent­ed as sus­pect­ed sab­o­tage was be­ing fun­da­men­tal­ly mis­read and dis­missed the in­ter­pre­ta­tion as po­lit­i­cal­ly dri­ven and tech­ni­cal­ly un­sound.

“I feel sor­ry for the in­di­vid­ual, but the task falls to us in the PNM to ed­u­cate not on­ly the in­di­vid­ual who is Min­is­ter Mooni­lal,” he said, re­ject­ing claims that the dam­aged pipeline re­flect­ed de­lib­er­ate in­ter­fer­ence.