New Delhi, April 28: A ministerial panel led by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee is likely to meet on Monday to review the $9.6-billion Cairn India stake sale to London-listed Vedanta Resources.

“The first meeting of the GoM is tentatively scheduled for Monday evening,” a senior oil ministry official said.

Besides Mukherjee, the GoM includes oil minister S. Jaipal Reddy, law minister M. Veerapa Moily, telecom minister Kapil Sibal and Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia.

The stake sale was referred by the cabinet to the GoM following “nuanced differences” between ministers looking into the deal. The government did not want to be seen to take a decision in a hurry.

Already facing fire in the corruption scandal over telecom licences, the government is reluctant to court another controversy by taking a decision that hints at favouritism.

The panel headed by the finance minister will study the transaction and a dispute over royalty payments.

The oil ministry had presented two options before the cabinet committee on economic affairs while seeking its approval. In the first option, it had suggested that Cairn should accept its partner ONGC’s claims on royalty and abide by government directives on paying cess.

Alternatively, it had proposed that the government should clear the deal but use legal means to enforce provisions of the contract about recovering the royalty cost from the field’s revenue before calculating profit.

Reddy had stated that the cabinet was unanimous in its opinion that royalties related to the deal should be cost recoverable, which means ONGC, which owns just 30 per cent stake in the field, should not be expected to bear the sole responsibility of paying royalties.

The Solicitor General of India had said the government should approve the deal only if Vedanta agreed to equitably share royalty on oil produced from the Rajasthan fields.