The Centre on Wednesday strongly opposed Reliance Industries Ltd's repeated requests to adjourn the hearing on the alleged pilferage of gas from an ONGC block in the Krishna-Godavari Basin to explore conciliation between the two sides. RIL has challenged the Union government's demand of $2.8 billion for the alleged pilferage.
Attorney General Opposes Adjournment
Attorney General R Venkataramani opposed the plea and insisted that the hearing should be concluded without further delay. The bench, led by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, told RIL, "We will conclude the hearing but will give breathing time to explore conciliation. If you arrive at a settlement, report it to us and we will dispose of the appeal."
RIL's Arguments in Court
At the outset of the hearing, advocates Sameer Parikh and R Sasiprabhu, representing RIL, made the request for adjournment before a bench comprising CJI Surya Kant, and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi. Earlier, RIL's lead counsel Harish Salve had requested the Supreme Court to adjourn the hearing to July, citing personal health issues and his desire to argue before the SC as he had conducted the proceedings before the arbitral tribunal that ruled in RIL's favour. The SC had told RIL to make alternative arrangements in Salve's absence.
Prior to the bench taking up RIL's appeal, which challenged the decision of a division bench of the Delhi High Court reversing concurrent findings in favour of RIL by the arbitral tribunal and the single-judge bench of the HC, senior advocate Mahesh Agrawal repeated the request for adjournment to enable RIL to explore conciliation. However, the bench remained firm about concluding the final hearing.
Senior advocate A M Singhvi, appearing for RIL, told the bench that the HC erred in interfering with the well-considered international arbitral award and explained that the flow of gas from the ONGC block to RIL was a natural phenomenon. He argued that even if RIL extracted gas belonging to ONGC, although not deliberately, the group has fully accounted for it and routed the benefits to the government, causing no loss to it.
Singhvi further stated that RIL and its global partners had invested $7.4 billion for exploration of natural gas, for which the government bore no risk. The government received $1.2 billion in terms of royalty, profit, and indirect taxes. Additionally, the government saved $13.7 billion in subsidy burden. He contended that the government's demand of an additional $2.8 billion is four times over RIL's profit of $644 million. Even if the government's contention were assumed to be correct on the alleged pilferage of gas from the ONGC block, the Centre is entitled to only $105 million.
Arguments will continue on Thursday.
