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BJP, Congress Relations With Reliance
Updated : Nov 1, 2012
Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday launched a blistering attack on the Congress and BJP for promoting the business interests of Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries, saying the UPA and NDA regimes conspired to organize benefits worth thousands of crores for the company at the public exchequer's expense.
The Congress and the BJP were savaged and their alleged favours to Reliance cited as examples of their collusion over corruption, the industry heavyweight was also scorched in what was clearly the first instance of its kind in recent times.
Apart from being mentioned as a glaring example of crony capitalism, the activists accused Reliance of hoarding gas from the KG basin field in order to profit at people's expense and of seeking to blackmail the government.
Bhushan and Kejriwal said Reliance had deliberately scaled down production of gas to pressurize the government into raising price prematurely, adding that while Reliance sought and got afour fold raise in capital expenditure on the KG gas field, only 13 of the 31 gas wells were in production.
The activists also played an audio clip from the infamous Niira Radia tapes, with former PM A B Vajpayee's foster son in law Ranjan Bhattacharya telling the excorporate lobbyist, "Mukeshbhai told me, Congress to apni dukaan hai". Reliance denied the charges and accused IAC of being a proxy of vested interests.