New Delhi, Aug 12 - Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been urged to order a probe into the antecedents of a former oil ministry official who scrutinised the price of gas from the Krishna-Godavari basin agreed between the companies led by the two Ambani brothers.

Samajwadi Party Rajya Sabha member Virendra Bhatia, in his letter to the prime minister, said Sunjoy Joshi, who handled the contentious decision in 2006 as a joint secretary in the oil ministry, subsequently joined an organisation promoted by Reliance Industries.

The decision taken by the ministry will not only benefit Reliance Industries but also cause losses worth crores of rupees to the government, Bhatia alleged.

'In January 2007, Joshi was employed, three months after these actions, in Observer Research Foundation, a fully-owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries,' said the letter.

Bhatia, accordingly, has sought a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) and the Department of Personnel and Training, also to ascertain whether due permission had been sought by Joshi to join the foundation.

When contacted, Joshi said Observer Research Foundation had nothing to do with Reliance Industries, and that there was no conflict of interest in his association with it.

'I would like to say that I am only a research fellow here. It is an independent think tank with several eminent people on its board of trustees and in other capacities. The foundation receives corpus funding from several sources and Reliance is only one among them,' he said.

'Observer Research Foundation does not do any work for Reliance Industries, nor is any member of the company on its board. And again I would like to say that I am only a research fellow here,' Joshi told IANS.

According to Bhatia, Reliance Industries vice-president B.