The Congress on Thursday attacked the Centre after the petrol price breached the all-time high in 73 years. While Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Thursday hit out at the Modi Government on a range of issues including the fuel price rise, Rahul Gandhi took a swipe questioning the development agenda of the ruling regime. Both the leaders besides the party in a statement criticised the Government also for the ongoing farmers’ protest.
“I demand the Government to keep the prices of petrol and diesel to that of the UPA era and give relief to the people and roll back all the three farm laws. In independent India, the country is at crossroads as farmers are on the Delhi borders for their genuine demands while the unbridled, insensitive government is breaking the backbone of the farmers and middle class,” Sonia said in a statement.
Sonia, who has been attacking the Modi government occasionally as against daily criticism by her son Rahul, mentioned in her statement that due to covid, all around the economy is already in shambles while the Modi government is putting money into their coffers.
Sonia alleged that despite less cost of crude in the international market the benefit should go to the consumers but the government is profiteering on it.
“In the last six years, the government collected 19,00,000 crore as excise duty from the people. Not only this, the rising costs of the domestic LPG has also disturbed the home budget,” she said.
Rahul took to Twitter and wrote: “There has been a ‘Superb development’ in the prices of petrol and diesel. The Modi government is looting the public by charging heavy tax on fuel. This is the reason why the government is not willing to implement GST on petrol-diesel.”
Congress slammed the government and wrote: “Suit-Boot-Loot Sarkar has proved itself once again with another “historic” milestone: petrol prices are now at an all-time high!”
“‘Cause looting money from the common man to fill the pockets of middlemen and crony-capitalists is why the BJP came to power,” the party said in its Petroloot campaign.
The cost of crude is around 51 dollars which means petrol should be around Rs 23 a litre but the prices are more than double which is highest in 73 years.
After the raise on Thursday, the petrol price in Delhi increased by 23 paise a litre, the second successive day of fuel price rise, to Rs 84.20 a litre from Rs 83.97 on the previous day. This is the highest level of retail price of petrol in the national Capital after October 4, 2018 when its price had risen to Rs 84 a litre.
In other metros, though the price of petrol has not yet breached the all-time high levels, it has reached very close to that level and may cross it this week if fuel price increases further in coming days.
In Mumbai, petrol price increased to `90.83 a litre on Thursday just 51 paise short of all-time high level of `91.34 reached on October 4, 2018. In Chennai, the petrol price currently is `86.96 a litre, a shade lower than historic high level of `87.33 a litre.
Similarly, petrol price also reached very close to record level of `85.80 a litre in Kolkata increasing to `85.68 a litre on Thursday.
