New Delhi: Nationalist Congress Party MP Supriya Sule slammed the Centre over the hike in fuel prices. She said that only elections can stop fuel price hike.
Speaking in Lok Sabha, she said, “Only elections are stopping the fuel price hike. Let there be elections every month so that the petrol, diesel and LPG prices don’t get hiked.”
On Tuesday, opposition parties had staged a walk out from LS in protest against recent hike in rates of fuel and cooking gas. Members of Congress, Trinamool Congress, DMK, NCP and Left parties walked out of the lower house, and were sloganeering demanding a rollback.
Raising the issue after Question Hour, Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said the opposition parties had been claiming that the prices of diesel and petrol would increase after the assembly elections to five states were concluded.
“They have been falsely claiming that the price rise has nothing to do with elections. This is wrong. They didn’t want to upset voters before they voted. Don’t forget that the central tax on fuel is more than 50% but they never think of reducing it,” Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor told NDTV and added that this won’t directly impact the BJP as there a no elections around the corner.
After the election results were declared for Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur there was widespread speculation of the price hike, as the Centre had steered clear of price hike during election season even when crude oil prices in the international markets went up constantly.
Prices petrol and diesel were hiked by Rs. 80 paise per liter on Tuesday, twelve days after the assembly elections results were announced in five states. Meanwhile, the cost of domestic cooking gas has been increased by Rs 50 per cylinder.
The price hike came after 137 days since daily fuel price revision was adopted in June 2017, but fears remained that the Russia-Ukraine war would spill over into India’s retail fuel prices sometime soon.
About 85 percent of India’s oil needs are imported, which makes India the world’s third-biggest oil importer and consumer. The local petrol and diesel prices of the country are linked with international costs of the two fuels, which move proportionally to crude prices.
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