The Congress on Saturday demanded that the government should immediately roll back petrol and diesel prices and excise duty affected post March 5, 2020 and pass on the benefit to people.
The demand comes a day after the oil marketing companies had hiked the prices of petrol and diesel by around 20 paise across the metros for the third consecutive day on Friday. The rates have now been hiked 12 times in the past 15 days.
“The people were expecting some kind of relief and economic assistance in these challenging times, but the BJP government is fleecing them by not only raising fuel rates on daily basis but also refusing to share benefits of lower crude with the people,” Congress general secretary in-charge of communications Randeep Surjewala said.
He said the “repeated and unjust” increase has inflicted pain and suffering on people. He said the excise duty on petrol was ₹9.20 per litre and ₹3.46 per litre on diesel in May 2014.
In the last six years, the excise duty on petrol has increased by an additional ₹23.78 per litre and on diesel by an additional ₹28.37 per litre. “This is a shocking 820% hike in excise duty on diesel and 258% increase in excise duty on petrol,” Mr. Surjewala said
The hike in prices and duty is despite the lowest ever crude oil prices.