Aam aadmi topi firmly in place, activist Arvind Kejriwalcrowned former union petroleum minister S Jaipal Reddy with a martyr's halo.His choice of headgear for industrialist Mukesh Ambani was a figurative pair ofhorns. The political gadfly and his colleague, advocate Prashant Bhushan, drewblood for the third time on Wednesday, accusing the NDA and UPA governments ofhaving enabled Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) to earn windfall profits fromthe Krishna Godavari gas basin. Reddy, who refused to comply with RIL’soutrageous demands for enhancing those profits still further, was sacked.
As always, Kejriwal’s sense of drama was given full play. Hestarted by playing audio clips of lobbyist Nira Radia’s conversation withbusinessman Ranjan Bhattacharya, in which he quotes Ambani as saying “Congressto apni dukaan hai”. He then described how the media had inundated him withcalls, asking who would be targeted that day. As it happened, it was not anindividual, but a system that was in the dock. The drama was to heighten as thepress conference wore on, with suspected Congress party workers disrupting theproceedings. They were eventually ejected from the venue, despite Kejriwal’srepeated pleas to the media and his own supporters to let the hecklers havetheir say and ask him whatever they wanted.
Kejriwal’s and Bhushan’s allegations, based on the CAG’sreport on the hydrocarbon sector and documents sourced from the petroleumministry were, in brief: that the NDA government had in 2000 signed aquestionable contract with RIL for exploitation of natural gas from the KGbasin, which allowed the company to increase its profits even as the totalprofits from the venture decreased; that RIL gold-plated its costs as thatbenefited the company under the terms of the contract (it bought materials onsingle tender contracts); that RIL has not only failed to meet the 11th plantarget of achieving self-sufficiency in natural gas but deliberately limitedproduction to 3 crore units instead of the agreed upon 8 crore units.; that itenhanced the price of the gas from USD 2.25 per unit to 4.25 per unit andsought to increase it to USD 14.25 per unit (this would mean that powergenerated from this gas would cost Rs 7 per unit instead of Rs 3). Reddy wassacked for turning down the proposed increase.
In association with Governance Now
