The News Minute| June 22, 2014| 5.30 pm
Armed with a Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) report, the AAP party has accused that Reliance, in collusion with the Central Government, siphoned off money from KG basin. AAP leader Prashant Bhushan has accused Reliance of misleading the country, looting natural gas and violated all its contractual commitments.
The AAP leader pointed out that the CAG report has pulled up Reliance Industries for charging a rate in excess of the government approved price for its KG-D6 gas field. Bhushan said that the CAG report had established that Reliance was charging the consumers a price of $4.205 per mmbtu even though the EGoM had fixed the price at $4.2 per mmbtu. This additional price resulted in excess billing of all consumers to the extent of $ 9.7 million for sale of natural gas until 2012-13.
The CAG report begins by stating that Reliance did not cooperate with the audit, did not provide several important documents and records and also desperately tried to mislead the CAG by providing wrong information, an AAP statement said.
AAP insists that Reliance was given a free hand by a colluding government and this was evident as the CAG has stated that in complete violation of the contract (PSC), Reliance was allowed to retain the entire block area in KG-D6 gas field till as late as 2013, despite the fact that they had to relinquish 50% of the fields by 2005 and a majority of the remaining fields by 2007.
As per the PSC, Reliance is required to place orders for its plant, machinery and other requirements through international competitive bids. In its 2011 report, CAG had pointed out that bids were arbitrarily rejected to favour some parties. Just one company namely Aker group got 8 out of 10 contracts, says AAP statement on CAG report.
Prashant Bhushan also pointed out that the CAG report says Reliance did not produce records regarding expenditure of Rs. 38.6 crore ($6.4 million) relating to interior decoration work in Gadimoga, the landfall point in Andhra Pradesh, three wells were dug in violation of the PSC provisions by Reliance and RIL had collected an amount of $261.33 million towards the marketing margin which has not been accounted for in the books.
The AAP has said that in light of the CAG report, the current government should not push for increasing the prices of gas as demanded by Reliance. If the prices are now increased, they would only show that the NDA government is in the same grip of crony capitalism, just as the UPA government was, adds the AAP in its statement.