New Delhi, Dec 1 (IANS) Reliance Natural Resources Ltd (RNRL) Tuesday held the Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) responsible for its inability to set up the Dadri power plant in Uttar Pradesh and said the latter cannot derive undue benefit from that.
“RIL cannot be allowed to take advantage of the wrongs committed by itself,” RNRL counsel Ram Jethmalani told a three-member bench of the Supreme Court that is hearing the Krishna-Godavari gas dispute.

Finances for the power plant could not be raised because RIL failed to give a bankable agreement and his client can’t be penalised, the counsel told the bench of Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, Justice B. Sudershan Reddy and Justice P. Sathasivam.

He, thereby, refuted an earlier argument by RIL that Anil Ambani-led RNRL was not entitled to the gas from the Krishna-Godavari basin since the original power project for which it was intended is yet to be commissioned.

“RIL cannot say I will not give you the gas because I did not give you a bankable arrangement earlier,” said Jethmalani, adding his client was also entitled to trade in the gas till the power plant is commissioned.

He pleaded before the court to order RIL to start giving the gas to RNRL forthwith as per the same terms and conditions earlier agreed so as to enable it sell to the same set of customers to which RIL is now supplying at an undue profit.

The three-member bench has been hearing the dispute over the supply of 28 million units of gas for 17 years at $2.34 per unit to Anil Ambani-led RNRL from the gas fields off the Andhra Pradesh coast, awarded to Mukesh Ambani’s RIL.

The price, tenure and quantity were based on the 2005 family pact, but RIL subsequently said it could only sell the gas for $4.20 per unit, as this was the price, the company claimed, fixed by the government.

The Bombay High Court had earlier ruled in RNRL’s favour.

Earlier, quoting from the minutes of a meeting of ministerial panel to decided the pricing of gas under the new licensing regime, Jethmalani told the court that even the cabinet secretary had found the proposed price of gas very high.

The RNRL counsel also told the bench that RIL concocted a bogus formula and conducted a bogus biding process to suggest a high gas price of 4.2 per unit to the ministerial panel.