Aam aadmi topi firmly in place, activist Arvind Kejriwal crowned former union petroleum minister S Jaipal Reddy with a martyr's halo. His choice of headgear for industrialist Mukesh Ambani was a figurative pair of horns. The political gadfly and his colleague, advocate Prashant Bhushan, drew blood for the third time on Wednesday, accusing the NDA and UPA governments of having enabled Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) to earn windfall profits from the Krishna Godavari gas basin. Reddy, who refused to comply with RIL's outrageous demands for enhancing those profits still further, was sacked.

As always, Kejriwal's sense of drama was given full play. He started by playing audio clips of lobbyist Nira Radia's conversation with businessman Ranjan Bhattacharya, in which he quotes Ambani as saying “Congress to apni dukaan hai”. He then described how the media had inundated him with calls, asking who would be targeted that day. As it happened, it was not an individual, but a system that was in the dock. The drama was to heighten as the press conference wore on, with suspected Congress party workers disrupting the proceedings. They were eventually ejected from the venue, despite Kejriwal's repeated pleas to the media and his own supporters to let the hecklers have their say and ask him whatever they wanted.

Kejriwal’s and Bhushan's allegations, based on the CAG's report on the hydrocarbon sector and documents sourced from the petroleum ministry were, in brief: that the NDA government had in 2000 signed a questionable contract with RIL for exploitation of natural gas from the KG basin, which allowed the company to increase its profits even as the total profits from the venture decreased; that RIL gold-plated its costs as that benefited the company under the terms of the contract (it bought materials on single tender contracts); that RIL has not only failed to meet the 11th plan target of achieving self-sufficiency in natural gas but deliberately limited production to 3 crore units instead of the agreed upon 8 crore units.; that it enhanced the price of the gas from USD 2.25 per unit to 4.25 per unit and sought to increase it to USD 14.25 per unit (this would mean that power generated from this gas would cost Rs 7 per unit instead of Rs 3). Reddy was sacked for turning down the proposed increase.

Mani Shankar Aiyer, who had held the portfolio before Murli Deora, had been sacked for a similar reason, said Kejriwal. He charged prime minister Manmohan Singh with cravenly giving in to Ambani and President Pranab Mukherjee, then the finance minister, of having railroaded NTPC into accepting a higher payout for RIL's gas than agreed upon in the contract.

The contract was heavily loaded in RIL's favour. Even so, it failed to hold up its end of the deal. When RIL did not meet its production targets, Reddy decided to disallow their capital expenditure and sent a notice for RIL, which would have meant a loss of Rs 11,000 crore to the company. He simply had to go. Not just Mukherjee but prime minister Manmohan Singh went out of his way to help RIL, Kejriwal said. When RIL's requests for increase in gas prices were turned down by the Empowered Group of Ministers several times and Reddy simply would not oblige, the PM asked the petroleum ministry to seek the attorney general's view on the matter – a first! Kejriwal asked why the PM had failed to endorse Reddy's stand on RIL, given that it was clearly in public interest. The crowning inequity, he added, was one RIL sold 30 per cent of the allocated blocks to British Petroleum for Rs 35,000 crore. It was a classic instance of crony capitalism and very similar to the coalgate scam.

He linked profiteering by corporates, on the basis of natural resources and public wealth, to the price rise. In facilitating undue profits to RIL, the PM laid himself open to charges under section 13(1)(d) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, Kejriwal maintained. He called on the aam aadmi to send a veritable deluge of RTI applications to the Ministry of Petroleum, to ensure that RIL did not continue to profit from the K G basin. He recalled the Enron case, which had involved windfall profits for the power major and said the KG gas deal was similar. He said the contract ought to be cancelled forthwith and production from the gasfield ought to be at reasonable prices – globally, USD 1 to 1.75 per unit in contrast to the USD 14.25 demanded by RIL.