| New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday reserved its verdict on the appointment of a third and presiding arbitrator in the dispute over gas pricing from KG-D6 basin between the central government and Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL).
Solicitor general Ranjit Kumar on Monday objected to the RIL’s plea for the appointment of a arbitrator stating that gas pricing was a policy matter that cannot be looked into by the arbitrator.
However, justice Ranjan Gogoi asked the company and the government to submit names of a possible third arbitrator in case the court decides to appoint one.
RIL, through its counsel Harish Salve, has sought a neutral arbitrator from a foreign country as the presiding arbitrator. In the previous hearing, Salve said that arbitrators could be chosen from Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Malaysia.
Gogoi said that the core issue of dispute was interpretation of the contractual clause between the government and RIL regarding the pricing of gas. Deciding this, he said, would be deciding the merits of the case, which could not be done.
Under the production sharing contract, the pricing clause says that the formula on which the price of gas is decided will be approved by the government. While RIL contends that this is an issue arising out of contract and thus needs to be arbitrated, the government says that pricing in itself is a policy matter.
Kumar pointed out that another three-judge bench of the apex court was hearing petitions challenging the validity of the 2014 pricing guidelines. |