Named in an AAP-filed FIR over alleged irregularities in gas pricing, former Oil Minister Murli Deora may write to Delhi Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung challenging the state government's jurisdiction in filing a police complaint on a decision taken by Union government.
Deora along with Oil Minister M Veerappa Moily, Reliance Industries and its Chairman Mukesh Ambani figures in the FIR filed by the Anti-Corruption Bureau at the behest of the AAP for allegedly creating an artificial shortage of gas in the country and raising prices.
Sources close to the former minister and Rajya Sabha MP said that Deora, who was the Oil Minister when an Empowered Group of Ministers headed by the then External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee fixed the USD 4.2 price for gas from RIL's KG-D6 fields for five years, is contemplating writing to Jung.
Deora may in the letter question Delhi government's jurisdiction in filing an FIR on a decision taken by the Cabinet of the Union government, they said.
The 2007 decision by the EGoM, which is a mini-Cabinet, fixing USD 4.2 per million British thermal unit as the price of gas from the eastern offshore KG-D6 fields was taken after two committees including one headed by Cabinet Secretary reviewed the price discovered by RIL as per contractual provisions.
Sources said Deora is seeking legal opinion on the FIR naming him for the 2007 decision.
Moily, under whom the fresh decision of raising the rates upon expiry of the term of USD 4.2 rate at end of March was taken, is however not contemplating writing to LG on the issue, sources in his ministry said.
They said the minister feels the decision to fix new rates from April 1, 2014 was taken much before he took charge of the ministry on October 28, 2011.
A committee headed by C Rangarajan, Chairman of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, was appointed by the Prime Minister on request of his predecessor S Jaipal Reddy to suggest a pricing formula to be applicable from April.
Moily, they said, merely took the recommendation of that committee to the Cabinet, which deliberated on the formula suggested by Ranagarajan twice over six months and approved it.
