Patna, November 4:
The price of petrol is going up after the Congress led UPA Government in Centre decontrols the fixation of prices of petrol in June last year. Under the auspices of SUCI (Communist) Patna District Committee effigy of Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh was burnt at Patna Junction roundabout here on Friday against the price hike of petrol by Rs. 1.82 with effect from Thursday midnight. While demonstrating SUCI (Communist) activists were shouting thunderous slogans like: ‘Rollback the increased price of petrol’, ‘Anti people UPA government go hell’, ‘State Government bring down price of petrol by withdrawing the taxes on it’ etc.
Addressing the meeting after burning the effigy the speakers said that the price of petrol has been increased nearly 70 per cent in last two and half years. This is the fifth increase since January and second within a couple of months. On the one hand the Union Finance Minister is terming ‘dangerous’ the rate of price hike of food and necessary items marked with 12 per cent, his government is allowing the profit greedy oil companies to hike the price of petrol on the other. The recent hike would accelerate the prices of commodities of daily use and food items resulting making people’s live miserable. They further said that the Central government is allowing oil companies to increase the price of petrol in order to ensure super profit for them. This increase has come at a time when data from Singapore and Arab-Gulf product markets show a declining trend both in petrol’s price and demand. Denouncing the recent increase in petrol’s price the speakers demanded for rolling back the increase.
The speakers also held responsible the State government for increasing the prices of petrol as it has not given relief to the people of the state by withdrawing or at least reducing the taxes on petroleum products. In the name of development and good governance the Nitish Government has imposed 24.5 per cent tax on petrol while it is 20 per cent in neighboring state Jharkhand, 18 per cent in Odisha and 20 per cent in Delhi. All the speakers demanded the state government to withdraw taxes from petrol. The meeting was addressed by Com. Shivlal Prasad, senior member, Bihar state Committee, SUCI (Communist), Sadhana Mishra, Secretary, Patna District Committee, SUCI (Communist), Awadhesh Kumar, Suryakar Jitendra, Rajkumar Chaudhary, Anil Kumar and Anamika, all members, Patna District Committee, SUCI (Communist).
