Barely a month before Metis Business Solutions CEO Pryas Jain was arrested by the Delhi Police in the documents leak case at the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MoPNG), he hosted an industry event “supported” by the ministry and sponsored by top public sector companies such as Gail and Oil India, in New Delhi on January 20-21. According to the details of the event, “India Gas Infrastructure Summit 2015”, uploaded on the Metis BS website, it was supported by the MoPNG. The key speaker was Dharmendra Pradhan, Minister of State, MoPNG, and other speakers included B C Tripathi, chairman, Gail; Yasmine Hilton, chairperson, Shell India; A K Balyan, chairman, Petronet LNG; Narendra Taneja, national convenor, energy in BJP; U P Singh, joint secretary, MoPNG, and N K Verma, CMD, ONGC Videsh. The event was sponsored by leading oil and gas PSUs and private players including Gail, Oil India, Petronet LNG, Welspun Corp and Mahanagar Gas. [related-post] “It was a public event and I go to hear people’s view regarding works that come under the ministry. How do I know that an official of Matis was involved in this? Also, my going to an event organised by them does not give permission to people to steal files and bend the system. The law will take its own course. Also, with regard to the corporates who have been found to be allegedly involved in the issue, I meet their officials and will continue to meet them but that doesn’t give them the license to bend the system,” said Pradhan. Asked about GAIL’s association with Metis BS, since it was the principal sponsor of the event, Tripathi denied having any association with the company. “There are so many conferences and seminars that happen. Since this was on gas infrastructure and we support such initiatives, we sponsored it. We did not know anything like this about them in the past,” said Tripathi, referring to the paper leaks. The CEO of Metis BS is currently in Delhi Police custody on charges of possessing confidential government documents. The case in which 13 individuals have been arrested till now revolves around the leak of documents from the MoPNG, which were later allegedly sold to several corporates operating within the oil and gas sector. Police claim that Santanu Saikia, a former journalist, and Jain used to obtain official documents from the ministry staff, “process the documents and prepare notes” before selling them to petroleum and energy majors. Jain has been sent to police custody till February 23. A look into an earlier event organised by Metis BS on “India LNG Partnership Summit 2014” on August 7-8, 2014, shows that D J Pandian, the then additional chief secretary, Gujarat (current chief secretary of Gujarat) was the key speaker. Others in the list included Taneja and Tripathi.
