By IANS,
Mumbai: Breaking its silence on the ongoing dispute with the Anil Ambani group over gas from Krishna-Godavari basin, Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries (RIL) Friday said it will comment on the matter only in the court.
Soon after, the Anil Ambani group reacted saying the statement was vague and general, without providing a single response to the issues it has raised in areas ranging from contractual obligations to capital expenditure on the Krishna-Godavari gas.
The group also said that RIL was deliberately “shortchanging” state-owned power utility NTPC to the tune of up to Rs.30,000 crore “by reneging on a binding gas supply contract at $2.34 per unit”.
“Typical of RIL’s conduct even after weeks of silence, it has evaded substantial issues of national and public interest that have recently come under a watchful nation’s spotlight,” said J.P. Chalasani, chief executive of Reliance Power, an Anil Ambani group company.
“With no possible defence on merits, RIL has resorted to vague generalities and not provided a single specific response to grave charges. This is in line with RIL’s unfortunate practice of never coming on record and instead only falling back on selective leaks and unattributable comments to media.”
Earlier, Atul Chandra, president of the petroleum business with Reliance Industries, while reading out a written statement before reporters here had said: “Our legal advisors have counselled us to refrain from commenting on the issue.
“We emphatically refute and outrightly reject the baseless and motivated allegations and insinuations made by Anil Ambani and his associates against Reliance Industries and its chairman Mukesh Ambani.”
Responding to the RIL statement, Chalasani said, “RIL is taking refuge under a false cover of ongoing legal proceedings to skirt questions of national importance.”
Chalasani also said RIL had not responded to specific issues, some of them being:
– Incurring disproportionate capital expenditure on Krishna Godavari D6 block, which could potentially cause losses of up to Rs.30,000 crore to the government of India
– Hiding facts on disproportionate capital expenditure through tainted reports of alleged independent experts who actually had serious and undisclosed conflict of interest with RIL
– Hoarding of gas by artificially curbing production to justify exorbitant pricing when global gas prices collapsed by over 75 percent
– Raising the bogey of revenue losses to the government to shamefully appropriate for itself the legal and unethical super profits of over Rs.50,000 crore
Responding to RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani’s purported remarks, Chalasani quoted Reliance Power chairman Anil Ambani as saying: “I am pained that under my respected elder brother’s leadership RIL is still doing everything in its power to renege on its binding commitment to supply gas to us.
“This is contrary to the fundamental values of trust and integrity that my visionary father Dhirubhai Ambani stood for and on the basis of which he founded Reliance.
“Whatever be the reason, and I have no idea what it is, corporate greed, personal vendetta , misguided advice from the three Cs that is chelas, chamchas and cronies, it is unfortunate and deeply distressing to me at a very personal and emotional level.”
Maintaining that there was personal gains for Anil Ambani, Chalasani added: “The only private and personal gains are unfortunately to RIL and its promoters.”
He also said the publicly-owned gas transportation company had been surreptitiously and deceitfully appropriated and transferred to private hands at the cost of RIL’s about 20 lakh shareholders.