CAG report on RIL highly damaging for India: RS Sharma

The Comptroller and Auditor General's (CAG) final audit report on Reliance Industries (RIL) says Reliance Industries violated the production sharing pact, but the DGH and Petroleum Ministry are equally to blame being ill-equipped to oversee the production sharing contract.

In an interview to CNBC-TV18, RS Sharma, former chairman of ONGC discusses the report. Also read: CAG report on RIL: Will it taint India's credibility? Below is the edited transcript of the interview. Also watch the accompanying video. Q: Production sharing contracts are very complex, most people will not understand them but you do. Do you believe that there is merit to what the CAG has said in its findings? A: Let me clarify, I have seen the draft report. I have not seen the final report. The draft report was about the performance audit of the production sharing regime. Initially, they had taken up 20 contracts and finally they picked up four representative contracts. They had taken Panna-Mukta and Tapti, the discovered fields. Then they took one pre-NELP block Barmer Rajasthan field and one 98X3 NELP block. This report is equally critical of all the areas. As per the draft report, they were highly critical about the operator for Panna-Mukta, Tapti field. I don