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Fuel price: Left, BJP threaten campaign

Vinay Kumar

— Photo: Anu Pushkarna

CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Sitaram Yechury addressing journalists in connection with the fuel price hike, in New Delhi on Thursday.

NEW DELHI: The Left parties and the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday condemned the “unwarranted” hike in the prices of petrol and diesel and threatened to launch a nation-wide campaign.

Stating that the hike came at a time when people were already suffering from the spiralling prices of essential commodities, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) said the peasantry was the worst-hit. “This hike will only fuel it further and have a cascading effect,” the Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) said in a statement here.

Terming the hike under the plea of an upward revision in international crude prices “unwarranted,” the Polit Bureau said the CPI(M) and the Left had consistently been demanding the restructuring of the indirect tax structure on petroleum and doing away with the ad valorem duty structure and replacing it with specific duties.

The Left parties have also been demanding the creation of a price stabilisation fund for petro products to be set up with the resources generated through the oil cess. “If the Central government had returned to the oil companies the ad valorem tax that it had collected over the budget estimates, the necessity of increasing the prices of petroleum products would not have arisen,” the Polit Bureau of the party said.

Avoidable: AIFB

Describing the hike as “avoidable,” G. Devarajan, Secretary of the All-India Forward Bloc, criticised the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government for ignoring the proposals of the Left parties for restructuring the tax structure. “This hike will break the backbone of the people as they are already putting up with the all-round price rise of essential commodities,” he said.

Demanding that the hike be withdrawn, the CPI(M) Polit Bureau member and MP, Sitaram Yechury, said the government’s “initial idea” was to hike petrol prices much more to meet the under-recoveries.

Mr. Yechury said that even this hike would not have been necessary had the government restructured the ad valorem tax structure on import of petro products. Since the UPA came to power four years ago, the government had decided to hike prices twice but was forced to roll back due to Left pressure, he said. “So the prices of petro products today stand at the level that prevailed before the UPA came to power. It has been forced to retreat earlier. Now too, we hope that the government will reconsider its decision,” Mr. Yechury told reporters here. “We are utterly disappointed by the decision,” he added.

Similar views

Similar views were expressed by the leaders of the Communist Party of India and the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP). “The CPI is completely opposed to the decision which will have a cascading effect on the already overburdened common man who has been hit badly by the high prices of all essential items,” the CPI national secretary and MP, D. Raja, told reporters. RSP leader Abani Roy appealed to the people to rise and protest against the government decision.

Vowing to launch a country-wide protest against the price increase, BJP president Rajnath Singh apprehended that the hike would further push up the prices of essential commodities, affecting all sections of the society, particularly the middle class and the farmers.

BJP national spokesperson Prakash Javadekar said the tax burden on petroleum products at more than 50 per cent was the highest in the world.

“The UPA government seeks to profiteer with every increase in petroleum prices at the cost of inflationary impact. The BJP has already warned the government to adopt a policy of revenue neutralisation before taking any decision on price hikes,” Mr. Javadekar said in a statement.

Withdraw hike: AITUC

Marcus Dam reports from Kolkata:

Gurudas Dasgupta, general secretary of the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) and senior CPI MP, appealed to the leaders of all trade unions “to jointly think of calling a general strike in protest against the increase in prices of petrol and diesel and the outrageous economic policies of the Centre.”

“This is the last nail in the coffin of the trustworthiness of the government and we demand an immediate withdrawal of the decision,” Mr. Dasgupta told The Hindu here on Thursday.

“It has reduced the Common Minimum Programme to a piece of paper that should be thrown into a waste-paper basket,” he added.

The magnitude of the loss to public sector oil companies that was being touted by the Centre as reason for increasing oil prices “is highly exaggerated,” he said.

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