ions of Cairn India Ltd. (532792.BY), and could jeopardize the biggest deal so far in India's oil and gas sector. The ministerial panel, headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, which met Friday evening to view the deal, didn't disclose what will they recommend federal cabinet committee on economic affairs. Oil Minister Jaipal Reddy told reporters Friday that the panel will submit its recommendations "as early as possible" with an outer limit of two weeks. Vedanta in August proposed acquiring up to 60% in Cairn India Ltd. (532792.BY), mainly from parent Cairn Energy and partly through an open offer to Cairn India shareholders as it sought to get a foothold in India's oil and gas sector. The proposed sale has lingered for months as the Indian government held back its approval in order to resolve issues of payment of taxes and royalties on a key onshore block in the northwestern state of Rajasthan. State-run Oil & Natural Gas Corp. (500312.BY) owns a 30% stake in Cairn India's Rajasthan oil block, but pays the entire royalty on production under the federal government's previous policy of giving discounts to attract investors. ONGC is expected to pay $3.08 billion in royalty fees over the life of the field. It maintains royalty should be an expense added to the cost of the project and recovered from the sale of oil. Cairnd last fall that she was leaving Liberty Central, less than a year after its creation, to join Liberty Consulting. According to IRS documents released by Liberty Central, she earned $150,000 from the organization in 2010.  Thomas has also earned income from Hillsdale College and the Heritage Foundation, the latter being proof enough, Weiner argued, that the justice is unable to participate in the eventual cases to reach the court.  Defenders of Justice Thomas note that nothing in the ethics rules compels Thomas to report the sums his wife earned on his financial disclosures. They add that it's no secret where Ginni Thomas worked.  Supporters of Thomas also say the effort to remove the justice from the court is an attempt to extract rulings -- 4-4 decisions at the high court leave appellate court decisions in place -- that they may not otherwise get on a divided court.  "If there's anyone who needs to recuse themselves from the health care cases it's Elena Kagan," said Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director for the Judicial Crisis Network  Severino, a former clerk to Thomas, told FoxNews.com that the only "reasonable explanation" for the recent attacks on Thomas is fear that Justice Elena Kagan, former solicitor general for the Obama administration, is going to have to recuse herself from future health care cases before the court. "I'm not sure she will need to recuse herself, either, but there's a lot of questions out there," she added. "Already we've seen that she was involved at a supervisory level with strategizing to defend this law." Severino said just because a spouse has an opinion -- or even earns a living off a position that may be debated before the court -- doesn't mean a jurist loses impartiality. If Mrs. Thomas had filed a case or brief in the issue, or was involved in the case, that'd be one thing, Severino said. But that's not the case here. "All of them have spouses and opinions. There has to be a rational stopping point for this kind of effort," she said. At the same time that Democrats go after Thomas for his wife's interests, another group is using those same disclosure forms to argue that the justice should be investigated by the FBI.  ProtectOurElections.org, run by Kevin Zeese, argued in a letter sent last week to the FBI that Thomas deliberately excluded his wife's income over the past 20 years and "engaged in judicial corruption" by receiving $