The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a petition seeking deregulation of petrol prices, restoration of Administered Pricing Mechanism and rationalisation of taxation of petroleum products.
A bench headed by Chief Justice SH Kapadia while rejecting the petition filed by All India Youth Federation (AIYF) said that ?pricing is a legislative activity… judicial review doesn?t lie on pricing of petroleum products…. On policy matter, it is dismissed.?
The court had initially allowed the petitioner to amend the petition by asking it to drop the prayer on pricing. ?If the Act provides for appointment of a regulator, we will appoint it. You amend the petition…We will look into the issue of appointment of the regulator in accordance with law…,? the court said.
AIYF, the youth wing of CPI, in its petition said that there was no rationale behind replacing the Administered Pricing Mechanism (APM) with the Import Parity Pricing (IPP) System to reduce under-recoveries, the calculation of which was neither systematic nor scientific. It said that the public sector oil marketing companies (OMCs) benefitted by the system of the price fixing of petroleum products but the ordinary citizens were looted.
?Such companies shall not be allowed to control the market which will adversely affect the entire economy,? the petition said, adding it was contradictory to say the companies were making losses while they were disbursing dividend to the government.?
It further said that the oil industry contributed 6.7% of the GDP and it was being controlled mainly by Indian Oil, Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum. Another impact of deregulation was that people were switching to diesel vehicles and thus adding to pollution, it added.