New Delhi: The Fertiliser Association of India on Friday moved the Supreme Court seeking permission to intervene as a contesting party in the RIL-RNRL gas dispute, which is scheduled to come up for hearing on September 1.
The national body representing fertiliser manufacturers in the country - public, private and cooperative sectors – has sought to protect the public interest, "which has been clouded and seriously effected by the MoU between the private parties".
According to the Association, the deal of 2006 "not just overrides the settled priority government policies on allocation of gas and price but deals with the national resource as its personal property contrary to the Constitutional injunction under Article 297 of the Constitution of India..."
Article 297 provides that the government has sovereign rights over the mineral wealth of the country.
Stating that any decision in the ongoing gas dispute is bound to affect the priority sector, the fertiliser body further said that "priority" status had been given to the sector by the Gas Utilisation Policy of 2008.
"The Gas Utilisation Policy of 2008 has been adversely given a go by due to private arrangement between the two parties ... ," the intervention application filed through counsel Kavita Wadia said.
With reference to the policies of the government, fertiliser manufacturers have executed individual agreements for buying gas from Mukesh Ambani group firm Reliance Industries Ltd, the fertiliser body said.
Even in the production-sharing contract (PSC) between the government and RIL, the latter is obliged to allocate gas on priority only, the body added.
The Centre had further given directions to RIL to supply natural gas to gas-based fertiliser plants, which faced a shortage of around 33 percent of requirement of 43 million standard cubic metres a day in 2008-09, the application said.
For some individual units, the shortfall was to the extent of 96 percent, it added.
The Association said that it serves the needs of more than 120 million farmers of the country.
Bureau Report
First Published: Friday, August 21, 2009, 21:26