Left parties slam govt for fuel price hike

New Delhi, Jun 25 (PTI) Slamming the government for
the fuel price hike, the Left parties Saturday demanded its
immediate rollback and asked their units to organise protest
actions all over the country.
Attacking the government for "striking another blow"
to the 'aam admi', they said the hikes come at a time "when
the people are suffering from all round price rise and the
inflation rate has crossed nine per cent".
Asking all their units to immediately conduct hartals,
demonstrations and other protest actions, the CPI(M), CPI, RSP
and Forward Bloc said it was "another cruel blow" to the
common people as the increase in diesel price would raise the
transportation cost and affect farmers, while those in
kerosene and LPG cylinders would burden the poor.
In a joint statement, the parties said the withdrawal
of five percentage points in customs duty on crude oil,
imposed last year, "shows how such taxes are levied by the
Centre to raise revenue and this is the main cause for the
high prices of petroleum products".
"Yet, the government refuses to restructure the taxes
on petroleum products and give up the ad valorem tax", the
four Left parties said, demanding that the hike be withdrawn
immediately.
The statement was signed by CPI(M) General Secretary
Prakash Karat, CPI's A B Bardhan, RSP's T J Chandrachoodan and
Forward Bloc's Debabrata Biswas.
Earlier, CPI National Secretary D Raja accused the
government of kneeling down before market forces and corporate
houses and demanded immediate roll back of prices.
Observing that the move came immediately after the
assembly polls, he said, "There is no transparency in the oil
sector. No one knows what the spot price of crude is, the cost
of refining it and the real component of taxes."
Accusing the government of allowing corporate houses
to plunder indigenous resources like natural gas, he said this
has been recently exposed by the Kaveri-Godavari basin gas
scandal.
"The Supreme Court has said that natural gases are
national assets. How does the government gives this national
asset on a platter to corporate houses.
CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury yesterday termed the
hikes "completely unacceptable" and said "Government had
committed to zero duty on petroleum products when it
deregulated their prices. It has not stuck to its promise.
Instead, it is imposing a burden on the people." PTI ARC
KAP