FIR laughable, Mukesh Ambani doesn’t run govt: P Chidambaram

NEW DELHI: Terming the FIR filed by former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s government against Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani as ‘laughable’, Finance Minister P Chidambaram said on Tuesday that the government was not biased as it has imposed huge penalties on RIL for producing less gas than promised and bank guarantees will be taken before allowing any price hike.

Kejriwal, in an interview to ET on Monday, had claimed that Ambani currently exerted unwarranted influence on policy making and that RIL had been practically running the country for the last decade.

“Mukesh Ambani will run India for the next five years if Modi comes to power just as Ambani ran India for 10 years of UPA,” Delhi’s ex-chief minister told ET. Kejriwal, who dramatically walked out of power last week, had ordered filing of a police complaint accusing petroleum minister Veerappa Moily of colluding with Ambani to raise the price of natural gas from $4.2 per million British thermal unit to $8 per unit, bestowing a windfall for RIL.

Reacting to Keriwal’s assertion that Ambani had been running the UPA government for the last ten years, Chidambaram said such “throwaway lines” do not deserve a rebuttal.

“The Petroleum Ministry has imposed a huge penalty on RIL. It has required them to furnish a bank guarantee for the undelivered quantity of gas pending the issue of price rise. So, how can anyone say that this government is run by a businessman,” he told PTI in an interview.