A petition was filed before the Supreme Court on Monday demanding that the Government approval for the Cairn Energy-Vedanta Resources deal be declared invalid.

The Public Interest Litigation (PIL), filed by a lawyer Mr Arun Kumar Agrawal, also sought the court’s directions to order a CBI probe into the manner in which the Government has cleared the deal.

The petition highlights "how the (Union) Government has allowed transfer of oil resources of the country worth lakhs of crores of rupees to a private company by giving up its own legal rights in complete violation of the public trust doctrine."

The Government’s decision that conferred "huge benefit to certain foreign private companies suffer from lack of fairness, transparency and accountability," it said, adding that, therefore, it is liable to set aside.

The petitioner also asked the court to direct the CBI to investigate the reasons for ONGC and Government not asserting and exercising their legal rights under the Right Of First Refusal as well as giving clearance to the deal on the basis of the existing right to share the royalty and cess on a pro rata basis.

The issue here involves the decision of ONGC and the Government to "relinquish their right to acquire 41 per cent of the shares in the Rajasthan oil block, one of the largest onland oil fields in the world."

The petitioner claimed that the loss to ONGC/nation on non acquisition of shares is around Rs one lakh crore calculated on 41 per cent share of oil field having 1.4 billion barrels of oil which costs $ 3.5 to mine, which is sold at over $100 and represents 30 per cent of the country’s total crude reserves.

Besides, the PIL wanted the CBI to be directed to investigate the "abuse of authority by Ministry of Petroleum and ONGC." This is because "ONGC (instead of Cairn) was made liable to pay the entire royalty at the rate of 20 per cent and cess on the entire production instead of only on its 30 per cent share of production on oil resources in the Rajasthan block," it said.

It also sought direction to the CBI to investigate the "considerations involved in the illegal extension of time for exploration given by the Ministry of Petroleum and Gas to Cairn when it was fully aware that the area had billions of dollars of oil as highlighted in the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General."

In addition, the petitioner wanted the court to direct the CAG to calculate the losses from the payment of 100 per cent of royalty and cess by ONGC before the Cairn-Vedanta deal. It also asked the court to direct ONGC and the Government to recover the excess royalty paid by ONGC.

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