The sweets industry in the Capital is suffering from a 50-per-cent drop in sales because of the scare caused by large-scale edible oil adulteration. The milk- or gram flour-based north Indian sweets are heavily dependent on vanaspati ghee or mustard oil, the cooking-oil medium found to be heavily adulterated with argemone and hence banned by the government.

The meethaiwallah associations have since met Lt Governor Vijai Kapoor and obtained a list of vanaspati and edible oil brands that have been banned. Most of them have switched brands from DCM-produced Panghat Vanaspati to Sarathi, but that has not helped much.

Says Satish Agarwal, one of the owners of the well-known Bengali Sweet Home in Bengali Market: ``We switched to Sarathi Vanaspati and got it tested before buying and even thought of putting out a board outside saying we are using safe oil. But the sales are down by half. The regular office and college crowd is still trickling in, but the evenings are really bad. That is the family time and the oil scare is keeping them away.''

Some sweets shops have been using Vanaspati ghee for the past 30 to 40 years without too many complaints. ``Even when we had problems, we sorted it out with the company directly. But this is large-scale. We're banking on corporate orders for Diwali,'' said Agarwal.

His counterpart Ramesh Gupta at the Nathu's Sweet Shop is bothered, but is banking on the festival spirit of Delhiites. ``Sales are down, but you never know. All these fears may get washed away by the festival fever.''

However, various Durga Puja committees are not so confident. One of the major earnings of the committees during the five-day long puja, comes from the temporary food-stalls around the pandals. No Bengali family, worth its salt, eats at home for the five days of the puja.

The committees are taking all possible precautions. ``Our puja committee is trying to make sure that nobody gets to sell anything that is cooked in mustard oil or Dhara. They will only allow Sunflower oil. But that is going to push the prices up and the committees' earnings are going to go down,'' says Indrani Bhattacharya, an active member of the Matri Mandir Durga Puja Committee in Safdarjung Enclave.

The two famous Chittaranjan Park Durga Puja committees are having a hard time thinking of ways to get the puja going like every other year. They are having second thoughts about allowing food stalls, which are too big for any kind effective restriction.

``But Durga Puja will not be Durga Puja without food stalls. What's the point if we have cook at home like the rest of the year. This terrible oil adulteration is turning out to be a killjoy and the ruin of our Durga puja,'' said A. Moitra, a resident of Chittaranjan Park.

And if the pre-Puja mela at the Chittaranjan Park is any pointer, the festival is on a doubtful wicket. The mela, in which the Bengali community does much of its puja shopping and the attendant eating-out, is mostly going empty.