NEW DELHI: Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) will raise the issue of gas pricing in arbitration proceedings against the government, as the company feels that even the price under the Rangarajan formula is “depressed” and well below the market level, RIL ’s lawyer Harish Salve told the Supreme Court on Thursday.“Pricing will also go to arbitration. It is a highly disputed question,” RIL counsel Harish Salve told a three-judge bench hearing twin. The PSC clearly refers to arms length market pricing, Salve said.Justices BS Chauhan, Jasti Chelameswar and Kurian Joseph are hearing PILs filed by CPI leader Gurudas Dasgupta and NGO Common Cause seeking court intervention to direct the government to scrap the Production Sharing Contract (PSC) and auction the KG 6 basin gas fields.The Rangarajan Formula, approved by the Cabinet last year, would have doubled gas prices to $8.4 per unit from April 1, but the Election Commission stopped the government from announcing the new price until the election code of conduct is in force. The new price under the formula has been criticised by customers and political parties, but it is well below the price at which liquefied natural gas (LNG) is imported.“Rangarajan (formula) still depresses prices. This is a dispute with the government,” Salve said.“Eventually which prices, who will decide, what formula, everything will have to go to arbitration. Experts will have to be called in.Otherwise, we will have to file a (civil) suit (for enforcing contractual liabilities),” he said.Salve drew the court’s attention to the broad sweep of the arbitration clause which provided for arbitration on any dispute or controversy which cannot be settled amicably between the two parties.Justice Kurian Joseph, who is part of the bench, was also struck by the “very wide” scope of the arbitration clause.Salve has earlier argued that the government does not fix the prices, but only audits the price discovered by the contractor.Salve also argued that delays on the part of the government in granting approvals had resulted in the company missing certain deadlines stipulated by the production sharing contract (PSC). Missing these deadlines had resulted in RIL having to relinquish some parts of the block.This was a perverse outcome, Salve argued, as it was the government which had caused the delays in the first place