Lucknow, June 16: The Samajwadi Party and the Congress are facing off over an oil refinery project, with the Centre pushing for its shift from Allahabad back to Amethi and the state government opposing the move.

The refinery project was conceived in 1991 when P.V. Narasimha Rao was the Prime Minister. The Centre had identified land at Kathaura village on the Lucknow-Sultanpur Road in Amethi constituency.

However, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL), which had taken up the project in a joint venture with Royal Dutch Shell, went in for a fresh feasibility report after the Congress lost the general elections in 1996. The report, which came out towards the end of 1997, pointed out that the “Lucknow-Sultanpur Road site was not suited because of waterlogging”, prompting the shifting to the project to Allahabad in 1998.

That year, Shell pulled out of the project, which was later announced as a joint venture between BPCL and Gail (India) Limited, formerly known as Gas Authority of India Limited.

“We have asked for a fresh feasibility report and if the same is positive we will face no problem in getting this (refinery project) shifted to Amethi,” Amethi MP Rahul Gandhi had said on April 15, 2005.

In May, Union petroleum minister Mani Shankar Aiyar had visited Allahabad and Amethi and had also met chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav to convince him about shifting the Rs 12,000 crore refinery project to Amethi.

The state government is believed to have registered its protest against the shifting of the project and has written to the Centre that it would oppose the move at the proper forum and move court if the United Progressive Alliance does not heed the objections.

“There are regional imbalances in the economic growth of the state. The UPA government should think of the development of all the important regions of this vast state,” Mulayam Singh had, according to sources, said in a letter to Aiyar last week.

The chief minister reportedly said he had no objection to the proposed Petroleum Technology Institute to be set up at Rae Bareli ? Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s constituency ? but the move to shift the refinery project to Amethi would trigger “frustration among the people of Allahabad”.

The Samajwadi’s stand makes political sense as it has managed to win all the seats in the Allahabad. Samajwadi leader Reoti Raman Singh bagged the Allahabad city seat, which Murli Manohar Joshi of the BJP had held, in the last general election and the party regained the Allahabad West Assembly constituency from the Bahujan Samaj Party early this month.

“It is unfair to shift the project from Allahabad now that people have known since 1998 that it would begin operation there. It would be an act of betrayal to the people of my constituency,” Singh said.