The Congress yesterday attacked the central government over the daily increases in the prices of petrol and diesel for over three weeks, saying that the government was “fleecing” the people.
Supporters of the main opposition party staged protests across the country.
Party president Sonia Gandhi and former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi along with party leaders released a video message for workers as party supporters adopted a unique method to protest using cycles and bullock carts.
“The protests aimed at underlining the government’s extortionist looting of the common man during the Covid-19 crisis by profiteering at their cost,” Congress leader K C Venugopal said.
“The party thanks its volunteers and workers for making today’s programme a huge success and hopes that the voice of the people will force the government to roll back its grossly anti-people extortionist decision of raising prices by charging record excise duty from the people,” he said in a statement.
“The government has set a new example of extortion from people through this unjustified increase in petrol and diesel prices. This is not only unjust but also insensitive,” Sonia Gandhi said, noting that it directly hurts the country’s farmers, the poor, the working class, the middle class and the small businesses.
Rahul Gandhi said “the government has raised prices of petrol and diesel 22 times. You will have to pay more for buying fuel. Indirectly, you suffer when inflation rises due to a hike in petrol and diesel prices,” even as the prices burn a hole directly in ones pocket every time one goes to a filling station.
“Price of crude oil is at an all-time low but fuel prices have touched an all-time high in India.”
The opposition party also said people from different sections of society and those rendered jobless were struggling to survive the economic ruin unleashed by the anti-people policies of the government.
“The BJP-led government is fleecing people by not just increasing fuel prices but also refusing to share with the people the benefits of lower crude oil prices globally, so as to reduce their burden,” party spokeswoman Khushbu Sundar said at a press conference here.
The Congress leader said “repeated and unjust increases” in fuel prices and the central excise duty on petrol and diesel had inflicted “insurmountable pain and suffering” on the people.
The Congress said that in May 2014, when the Bharatiya Janata Party assumed power, the excise duty on petrol was Rs9.20 per litre and on diesel Rs3.46 per litre.
“In the last six years, the government has increased the excise duty on petrol by an additional Rs23.78 per litre and on diesel by an additional Rs28.37 per litre. It is a shocking 820% hike in excise duty on diesel and 258% increase in excise duty on petrol,” Sundar said.
“The government has earned Rs18,00,000 crore in the last six years by increasing the excise duty,” she added.
However, Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan hit back at the Congress, saying the money collected was used for welfare measures instead of personal benefit.
“I once again reiterate to Madam Sonia Gandhi that the prime minister has transferred more than Rs65,000 crore to 42 crore people in the last three months,” Pradhan said.
“Unlike Congress’ legacy of transferring money into the accounts of middlemen, ‘The Family’ and Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi’s DBT (direct benefit transfer) is about putting money in the hands of the poor, farmers, migrant workforce and women,” the minister said.
He also reiterated what BJP president J P Nadda has been saying in many of his virtual rallies, asking why the Congress-ruled states were also hiking tax on fuel if the party was against the idea.
A car is carried on a bullock cart as part of a protest organised by the Congress party against the hike in fuel prices, in Ahmedabad, yesterday.
