Telangana: Amid anger over rising prices of fuel, Telegu Desam Party (TDP) worker on Tuesday set his own two-wheeler on fire.
The incident took place in Krishna district’s Nandigama Village. The fuel price hike has raised a concern across the nation and invited a wrath of the general public for whom transportation has become costlier and inconvenient.
“Prices of diesel have gone up by Rs 2.15 just in 9 days. Prices of petrol went by Rs 2.24 just in 9 days. It is as if both petrol and diesel were waiting for the Karnataka Election to conclude,” said Pawan Khera attacking the government.
“Fuel prices are directly linked to crude oil. OPEC countries have reduced supplies. We don’t have any say to bring down price. We can only reduce VAT of state taxes and central taxes, that is only way to reduce the price,” said Ajay Bansal, Petrol Pump Dealers’ Association’s President.
The central government levies Rs 19.48 a litre of excise duty on petrol and Rs 15.33 per litre on diesel. State sales tax or VAT varies from state to state. Unlike excise duty, VAT is ad valorem and results in higher revenues for the state when rates move up.
The government had raised excise duty nine times between November 2014 and January 2016 to shore up finances as global oil prices fell, but then cut the tax just once in October last year by Rs 2 a litre.
Subsequent to that excise duty reduction, the Centre had asked states to also lower VAT. Just four of them — Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh — reduced rates while others including BJP-ruled ones ignored the call.
In all, duty on petrol rate was hiked by Rs 11.77 per litre and that on diesel by 13.47 a litre in those 15 months that helped government’s excise mop up more than double to Rs 2,42,000 crore in 2016-17 from Rs 99,000 crore in 2014-15.
Earlier, Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan assured the public that the government will soon take out a solution to tackle the situation.
He further pointed out that less production of oil in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and hike in crude oil price in the international market are some of the factors affecting the fuel price.