After almost 19 days of leaving the auto fuel prices untouched, public sector oil marketing companies on Monday hiked petrol price by 17 paise a litre and diesel by 21 paise.

The timing of the decision was in keeping with two developments — the end of polling in Karnataka State elections on May 12 and the US decision to impose sanctions on Iran last week.

After the revision, petrol is sold at ₹74.80 a litre, while diesel is sold at ₹66.14 a litre in Delhi. Petrol price had risen steadily from ₹73.73 a litre on April 1 to ₹74.63 a litre till April 24 while the diesel price rose from ₹64.58 a litre to ₹65.93 a litre during the same period.

From June 15, 2017, the government had allowed the oil retailers to do daily revision of petrol and diesel.

Meanwhile, the Opposition has slammed the government move of maintaining status quo from April 24 till the Karnataka elections were over. Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram tweeted: “There we go again. More taxes on petrol and diesel, more burden on the consumer. The Karnataka election was only an interval.”

The government, on its part, has denied the allegation. Even the oil retailers denied the allegation. IndianOil Chairman, Sajiv Singh had said that even though the benchmark prices of petrol and diesel were rising, they “were not backed by fundamentals'”. Officially, this had prompted the company to hold price revisions.

The high fuel price had also prompted for calls to lower the tax component on auto fuels. But the Ministry of Finance had denied making such concessions citing the fiscal position.

In line with the rise in crude oil prices, other fuels have also become dearer. AutoGas or Auto LPG was sold at ₹40.45 a litre on May 1 for the entire month. It was sold at ₹40.39 a litre during April.

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