Reliance Industries Ltd has uploaded a video on YouTube, refuting the allegations levelled by the Aam Aadmi Party against the Mukesh Ambani-led company.
RIL has said a Gujarat minister is related to the Ambani family, but the company has not received any undue favour from him.
An RIL spokesperson, in an e-mail response to
The video is also a response to the litany of allegations made by AAP Chief Arvind Kejriwal on March 7.
The former Delhi Chief Minister said RIL had benefited from its relations with Saurabh Patel, Minister of Energy, Petrochemicals and Minerals in Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s Gujarat Government.
In the video, a spokesman of the company, Umesh Upadhyay, without naming either Kejriwal or Patel, says the gas fields under question are located off the coast of Andhra Pradesh, 1,500 km away from Gujarat.
He adds gas falls under the purview of the Centre and not State Government.
While the minister is responsible for the petroleum department, under the Indian Constitution, that subject is also with the Centre, says Upadhyay.
RIL’s petroleum refinery in Gujarat was established many years ago in a deregulated area, where anybody can do business.
Therefore, how was it possible that the minister can pass on the benefits, he asks.
‘Politically motivated’
The minister is also responsible for mineral mining in the State, over which the Centre and State governments have partial control.
But RIL does not have any mining interest in the State. On the matter of electricity, the company produces its own electricity for its captive consumption, says Upadhyay, adding that the allegations are politically motivated.
A strange and irresponsible statement by a political leader at the India Today Conclave was aired live and placed on the social media.
The statement is fraught with poor knowledge of the constitutional scheme and is aimed only to misinform, RIL added in a statement.
Fear psychosis In another video on Youtube, Upadhyay says a fear psychosis is being created in the minds of the masses that come April 1, inflation will start raging in the country as gas prices will be increased by the Government.
LPG price He refutes the allegation that LPG price will double once gas prices are increased.
LPG can neither be made nor is being made from KG-D6 gas, he adds.