Reliance has, in an unsigned statement, clarified that "the charges made are totally baseless. We do not know why the honourable member of parliament has chosen to make such unsubstantiated allegations."

Patel has also asked for withdrawal of the licence issued to Reliance for its Jamnagar refinery and review the decision to allow the company to distribute petroleum products with an eye on curbing adulteration.

In separate letters written to prime minister AB Vajpayee and the chairman of standing committee on petroleum, Patel has said that at RIL's Hazira cracker plant, 2 million tonnes of naphtha were imported by the company as a "consumer", of which only 1 million was used to extract 300,000tonnes of the required chemical. The rest was not sold as petrol but as a by-product. Reliance, therefore, paid a 10 per cent excise duty against 164.50 per cent it would have had to pay otherwise.

"Needless to say, all these products are used for adulterating petrol. The remaining 1 million tonne of imported naphtha is straightaway sold under fake names to petrol pumps through front companies," Patel states in his letter.

According to the letter, Reliance receives its kerosene from Bharat Petroleum Corporation for extracting paraffin wax. The product is then forwarded to the market as kerosene through BPCL's kerosene-distribution channels. However, when import of kerosene was liberalised, Patel says that Reliance grabbed the opportunity to import kerosene directly, extract paraffin wax and release the rest through its front companies to petrol pumps, which in turn sold them as diesel.

"Here again, the exchequer loses hundreds of crores of rupees every month and selling kerosene instead of diesel cheatsthe consumers," Patel says, adding that Reliance has got into crude oil production at the Panna-Mukta fields through "manipulative bidding."

"I believe that the CBI has already conducted an inquiry, but the inquiry reports have been suppressed at the ministry level at the insistence of the interested parties," he has said.

Patel adds that the naphtha pumped from BPCL's Mumbai refinery to RIL's Patalganga plant was stolen while pumping and released through various front companies to the petrol pumps to be sold as petrol.

The matter was discovered by customs and central excise officer Dayashankar, who was transferred. In a related case, IPCL got naphtha from Indian Oil Corporation's Koyali refinery in Gujarat and after cracking, the by-product was released to the actual users after paying due duty. However, in the case of Reliance, it was released under different names at different times to avoid paying duty.

"While Reliance makes large sums of money, the consumer is cheated through the petrol pumpswith adulterated products and also the exchequer is robbed of crores in taxes," Patel has stated.

Meanwhile, chairman of the standing committee on petroleum, Balram Jakhar, declined to comment on the Reliance case, but spoke of the need for deterrents to curb adulteration.

Jakhar said that the 44-member committee visited ONGC's Bombay High and Heera oil fields, the BPCL refinery and Rashtriya Chemicals & Fertilisers plant in north-east Mumbai after Chennai, Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam. He added that the committee would shortly visit the north and the east.