The government’s ‘policy’ of pampering the big industrial and business houses at the cost of the poor and middle class sections has drawn flak from the Leader of the Opposition in the AP Legislative Council Dadi Veerabhadra Rao.
The steep hike in diesel price and the withdrawal of subsidy on additional gas cylinders while extending subsidies to multi-billionaires reflects the anti-poor and pro-rich policies of the Central and State governments, he told a media conference in Visakhapatnam on Friday.
The Centre has hiked the prices of petroleum products 27 times since it came to power. He refused to buy the theory that the oil companies were making losses. Quoting from the websites hosted by the public sector Indian Oil Company (IOC) and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL), he said that the first quarter results of both the companies show that they had made profits of 17,760 crore and Rs.3,962 crore respectively.
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The government was even giving up the benefit of central excise duty reduction to the oil companies instead of passing them on to the consumers.
Communist Party of India (Marxist) district secretary C.H. Narsinga Rao has in a statement demanded immediate withdrawal of hike in diesel prices and the controversial decision to limit supply of domestic gas cylinders to merely 6 in a year, failing which the people would teach a befitting lesson to the UPA government.
In a separate statement Communist Party of India, city council leader S.Murali denounced the UPA government for the indiscriminate hike in diesel price by Rs.5 a litre. Protesting the hike, CPI workers burnt an effigy of the Union Government.
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