Govt rejects IOC plea, to let Reliance bid for IPCL

new delhi: the government has virtually decided to reject indianoil''s demand to ban reliance from participating in the disinvestment of ipcl on grounds of market dominance. the concerned ministers are learnt to have considered ioc''s demand and concluded that it didn''t have merit. apparently, the disinvestment department invoked the "straw sandal principle" to argue that reliance''s participation in ipcl''s disinvestment was in order. this principle, said to have been evolved by chinese leader mao ze dong, lays down that certain principles can evolve, and have evolved, by virtue of past experiences. in this case, the disinvestment of hindustan zinc ltd was taken as the relevant past experience. it''s been pointed out that when binani zinc bought out hindustan zinc it gained a near total control of the indian zinc market. but that did not disqualify binani from bidding for hindustan zinc. the government is also of the view that what mattered was abuse of market dominance, not dominance per se. another argument that impressed government leaders was that petrochemicals - the produce of ipcl - was like zinc on the open general licence for imports. this being the case, the possibility of any abuse of dominance would get minimised. petro-products were, however, canalised items and that being the case there was merit in preventing the emergence of any monopoly in the sector. the ioc, on being barred from the disinvestment of hpcl and bpcl after it won the ibp bid, had argued that reliance should be likewise barred from the disinvestment of ipcl. for, if it were to bag ipcl, reliance would have a near monopoly in petrochemicals. "what''s sauce for the goose must be sauce for the gander," a top oil professional in the public sector had said while arguing that the government''s policy towards the public sector on disinvestment was "discriminatory". the government had justified its controversial decision on ioc by saying that the acquisition of any, or both, of the two oil companies would make ioc a monopoly player. the decision of the ccd to bench it, however, didn''t go down well with petroleum minister ram naik and ioc had then argued that reliance should be excluded from the ipcl bid by the same criteria.