Union Petroleum Minister M Veerappa Moily accused CPI MP Gurudas Dasgupta of falsely accusing him of favouring Reliance Industries in matter of allocation and fixing of price for gas produced from KG gas basin.
Filing an affidavit in response to Dasgupta’s PIl in Supreme Court, Moily said that by making him a party to the proceeding, the petition aimed to “derive political mileage” and amounted to sensationalising the matter. Backing his decision of fixing a high price for gas, Moily argued that “it may not be out of place to state that Minister being at the helm of affairs has to take decision after duly considering the enormity of the issues including energy security of the country.”
He even denied that there was any “backdoor attempt” to give undue favours to RIl by reducing the transportation and liquefaction costs, thereby giving RIl a higher price. Stating that the Government was committed to the arbitration proceeding, he responded to the charge that he tried to stall the arbitration by stating that the arbitration was initiated by the Contractor and not by the government and hence, “there is no way by which Respondent No. 2 (Moily) has stalled or in fact could have stalled the arbitration proceedings.” The Government is also expected to file its reply to the PIl later this week.