Case to come up for hearing today

The Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) and Reliance Natural Resources Ltd (RNRL) gas dispute is scheduled to be taken up by the Supreme Court in an afternoon hearing tomorrow.

The case was earlier listed as the second case of the day, but a company executive said with the change in composition of the judges’ bench, it was expected to come up for hearing later in the day. A three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and comprising Justices P Sathasivam and RV Raveendran, will hear the case. Raveendran replaces Justice B S Chauhan.

Senior lawyers Ram Jethmalani and Mukul Rohtagi will appear for RNRL in tomorrow’s hearing, while lawyers Harish Salve and Milind Sathe will fight the case for RIL. This is the first hearing on the case after Anil Ambani offered to make peace with Mukesh Ambani. The younger brother had earlier accused the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas of siding with Mukesh.

RIL had first moved the apex court, challenging the decision of the Bombay High Court delivered on June 15 and which had asked RIL to provide 28 million metric standard cubic metres per day (mmscmd) of gas to RNRL at a price of $2.34 per million British thermal unit (mBtu).

The government had also moved a special leave petition in the case, asserting its right on pricing and distribution of natural gas. RNRL argued that the government has no role to play either in the utilisation or the fixation of gas price on its contract with RIL.

However, RIL has contended that it was only a contractor for the gas from the KG-D6 block and did not have the power to fix the price.