Headlines
Those calling us 'suit boot sarkar' raised gas price to $9: Pradhan
New Delhi April 21
Taking a dig on Congress
vice-president Rahul Gandhi for his "suit-boot sarkar" remark about the
NDA, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Tuesday said the previous
UPA administration had approved a natural gas price of $9 without
bothering about its impact on the common man.
"Now, this friend
of mine, who has just returned from a holiday, calls my government a
'suit-boot' government. But it was their government which had approved a
price of more than $9 on NCV (net calorific value) basis without
looking into purchasing capacity of the country," the minister said at a
roundtable here on hydrocarbons organised by industry chamber FICCI.
"If
my friend's (Rahul Gandhi) order would have been executed, the price on
NCV would have been over $9 against imported LNG being available at
$7-8. And they are accusing us of being a suit-boot government," he
added.
Speaking in the Lok Sabha on Monday, Gandhi had
criticised the Modi government of being anti-farmer and
pro-industrialist while describing it as a "suit-boot sarkar".
The
UPA government had accepted the recommendations of the Rangarajan panel
and approved more than doubling of the domestic natural gas price for
producers to $8.4 per million British thermal unit from $4.2.
The
NDA government ordered a relook and in October announced a new price of
$5.61 per mmBtu effective from November for five months. The price has
further fallen to $5.17 this month in step with global trends, Pradhan
said.
"The gas pricing formula we evolved balances the wellhead gas price expectations with end users capacity to pay," he said.
The
minister said the arms-length discovered price of gas from the eastern
offshore KG basin block of Reliance Industries $2.34 per mmBtu but it
was abandoned for $4.2 per mmBtu rate, fixed for the first five years of
production beginning April 2009.