Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Price hike: Chandy hopes to reduce impact

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Chief Minister Oommen Chandy has said that the government will see how best the State can provide relief to the people from the increase in price of cooking gas, diesel, and kerosene.

Briefing reporters about the deliberations at the MPs' conference here on Saturday, Mr. Chandy said that though the government was aware of the circumstances that had led to the price hike, it knew well that the ordinary people would not be able to bear the price hike.

State worst hit

Kerala would be the worst hit by the price hike. When the price of petrol was increased, the UDF government had immediately responded by foregoing sales tax on the increased price component.

Still, the Opposition had called a hartal resulting in huge production losses to the State.

Opposition criticised

The Opposition stand was disappointing, but that would not stop the government from considering what could be done to ease the people's difficulties, he said.

Earlier, the issue was raised at the MPs' conference first by M.P. Achuthan (CPI) and later by P. Rajiv (CPI-M), who felt that the matter deserved to be looked in a non-partisan manner.

They hoped that the government would provide relief to the people as it had done when the price of petrol was hiked recently.

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