Welcoming the Centre’s decision on reducing the price of natural gas, the main petitioner in the issue in the Supreme Court and CPI leader Gurudas Dasgupta on Tuesday urged that the Government should also implement the pricing in rupee terms and abolish the dollar terms. Dasgupta said the Government’s decision to reject the Rangarajan Committee’s recommendation to provide 8.4 dollar per unit was due to the public outcry and pending litigation before the apex court.
“It is not surprising that Government did not find enough reason to hold the Rangarajan Committee recommendation. Rejecting the recommendation to provide 8.4 dollar per mmbtu and fixing the price at 5.61 dollars is welcome. But even this price is on the higher side because the cost of production has not been properly evaluated,” said Dasgupta.
The CPI leader asked the Government to ignore the international pricing rates in calculating the price of domestically produced natural gas. He reiterated that Centre should implement pricing in rupee terms for domestically produced natural gas and scrap the dubious dollar based pricing system. “This dubious dollar based pricing system will be exploited by private operators like Mukesh Ambani during foreign exchange fluctuation. I repeat, the current price of 5.61 dollars per unit is also high as the Centre has not taken the exact cost of private operators for producing natural gas,” said Dasgupta.
“Domestic gas production has to be considered on the exact cost of the private operators who got the contract for exploration. International prices in Japan cannot be applied in productions in Indian soil. Huge public outcry and pending litigation in Supreme Court has foiled the attempts of Corproates to get huge prices. This forced the government to change its positions. We will watch the situation and be alert on the future decision of government on this regard,” he said.