Centre to supply CNG to Gujarat at uniform price by Nov 30

AHMEDABAD: After the Centre filed an affidavit of compliance before the Gujarat High Court stating that it would supply CNG to the state at the same price as Delhi and Mumbai under the Administered Price Mechanism ( APM), the court today reserved the matter for December 3.

A division bench of Chief Justice Bhaskar Bhattacharya and Justice J B Pardiwala today reserved the matter for December 3 after the petitioner and the state government sought time for going through the guidelines indicated in the affidavit.

As per the guidelines issued by the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell ( PPAC) of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas earlier, the Gas Authority of India Ltd ( GAIL) has been directed to finalise the operational modalities of supplying gas to the City Gas Distributors (CGDs) that should come into effect at the earliest and not later than November 30 this year.

The affidavit of compliance was filed before the high court last week in accordance with the court order, pronounced last month, asking the Union Government to comply with its order by November 18 and also asked the Secretary of the Union Petroleum Ministry to appear before it in case of non-compliance.

In its affidavit, the Centre said that it has formulated a policy for allocation of supply of natural gas to the CGDs for the purpose of CNG (transport) and PNG (domestic) segment.

The policy, according to the affidavit, removes discrimination among all the CGDs to the extent of supply of domestic gas for CNG and PNG segment.