A public interest petition objecting to the awarding of the oil exploration licence to Cairn India will resume next week in the Supreme Court with the petitioner, a lawyer and maritime affairs specialist, saying there is still an issue of a lack of transparency in the transaction.

The license agreement was signed in Colombo this week in the presence of President Mahinda Rajapaksa and a lot of fanfare including a media conference chaired by Petroleum and Petroleum Resources Minister A.H.M. Fowzie to announce the deal.

The Sunday Times FT learns that the petitioner, Malika Gunasekera, an expert on maritime affairs with a masters degree from the University of Utretch Netherlands and a visiting lecturer on the law of the sea at the Colombo University, is filing a motion to ‘resume’ the case in the Supreme Court.

Two weeks back, he filed the fundamental rights petition before the Supreme Court claiming that the awarding of oil exploration bid to Cairn (Pvt) Ltd of India was not transparent. The case was filed as public interest litigation under article 12 and 17 /126 of the Constitution on June 25.

The 3-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Sarath N Silva concluded that the petitioner should be allowed to inspect the documents pertaining to the transactions of the oil exploration agreement with the Indian company. In court, Senior State Counsel Milinda Gunathilake on behalf of the Attorney General submitted that the decision on this matter was taken by the cabinet of Ministers according to law on the basis of the report of 7the cabinet approved negotiating committee. He noted that these documents are available for any inspection.

He further submitted that since the petitioner has expressed his concern on this matter in the public interest he has no objections to show these documents to the counsel of the petitioner in his chambers on July 9. The petitioner inspected the documents on Wednesday, July 9 and decided to ask court to resume hearing in the case..