Delhi government has moved the Supreme Court challenging Centre's CNG gas distribution policy, saying it deprived the national capital of the natural resource leading to increase in its price.

Moving a contempt petition against the Director and Secretary of Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, the government submitted that the guidelines are in violation of the apex court's order which had directed the Centre to allocate CNG to the transport sector first.

The petition said that the CNG is being allocated to the industries without first exhausting the full requirements of the transport sector. It said that distributor of CNG in Delhi is constrained to import CNG at much higher prices which in turn leads to increase in the price of CNG being sold to the transport sector.

The petition said that Delhi requires more supply of the gas as there are about 11,000 buses, 76,000 three wheelers and 34,000 taxis, which operate on CNG.

In addition to this, it said, there are about one lakh light goods vehicles and about 4.5 lakh private vehicles which operate on CNG.