The Hindu Business Line : Left parties to protest oil price hike

Protesting against the fuel price hike announced by the Centre on Wednesday, the four Left parties will start organising rail roko, rasta roko, strikes, hartals and other forms of mass protests across the country from Thursday.

Demanding that the Government should review the decision, a joint statement issued by the CPI(M), CPI, Forward Block and the RSP on Wednesday said that the Left parties will organise hartals, strikes, picketing, rail roko, rasta roko and demonstrations between June 5 and June 11 to register the people’s protest against this unjustified burden.

The Government has increased prices of petrol (Rs 5 a litre), diesel (Rs 3 a litre) and cooking gas (Rs 50 a cylinder) with effect from Thursday.

Pointing out that the Government had ignored the set of alternative proposals given by them to combat rising global oil prices, the communist parties said that the only substantial initiative taken by the Government in this direction was to remove the five per cent import duty on crude oil.

They also expressed concern over the Government’s refusal to impose a windfall profits tax on the oil and gas extracting companies and the private oil refineries.

“This onslaught on the people comes at a time when they are suffering from the steep rise in the prices of all essential commodities. In the background of the failure of the Government to tackle the rising rate of inflation, this hike in petroleum prices will further aggravate the inflationary situation,” they said.

The increase in the price of diesel, in particular, will have a cascading effect on all-round prices as the transportation costs will rise sharply. The Rs 50 increase in the price of LPG cylinder will also be a crushing burden on family budget of ordinary people, the general secretaries of the four parties said in a signed statement.

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