Thursday, January 20, 2011

CITU denounces Petrol price hike by the Scam Tainted Government

CITU strongly denounces the scam tainted UPA Govt’s. shameless act of imposing fresh burden on common man through Rs. 2.54 per litre hike in petrol price. It appears that the Govt. is bent on recovering the money lost through multimega scams like 2G spectrum, CWG etc. from the pockets of common man by hook or crook.

CITU does not find any justification in oft repeated false claim by the govt. that price hike of Rs. 5.50 per litre within a month since last hike on 15.12.2010, is because of high international crude price. The present crude price of 92 dollars/barrel which is equivalent Rs. 26 per litre does not justify petrol price of Rs. 59 per litre approx. in Delhi. 

CITU demands that Govt. should reduce and rationalize its disproportionate and irrational taxation which is the root cause of high price of petrol and diesel. For example central excise duty on petrol is Rs. 14.35 per litre whereas for Aviation Turbine Fuel (ATF), used in Aircrafts, the same is Rs. 2.75 per litre. This is lower even than Rs.4.60/litre on diesel, a product of mass consumption. CITU demands that cess of more than Rs. 8000 crore collected from ONGC & OIL India, by the Govt. should be used as price stablisation fund to take care of fluctuation of global crude oil price without affecting the people through price-rise. CITU further demands that ONGC should not be made to shoulder the burden of royalty payment in thousand of crores for crude oil produced by the Private Oil Companies like M/s. Cairn and others. 

CITU also deplores the Govt.’s deceptive tactics of fleecing the common man with so called “market determined” price for petroleum products whereas it sold spectrum worth several millions of rupees in 2008 at an abysmally low price prevalent in 2001 in a most arbitrary manner. It is preposterous for the present corporate captive govt. to talk about recovering the “notional” amount of so called under-recovery of OIL PSUs from “Aam Admi” while their spokesmen Kapil Sibal and Montek Singh Ahluwalia justify Rs.1.76 lakh crore loss to the exchequer in the spectrum scam, as notional loss. Govt. should first recover proven under-recovery to public exchequer owing to scam in sale of 2G telecom spectrum instead of burdening the Aam Admi with regular dosage of petro-product price hike on the plea of absolutely notional “under-recoveries” of OIL PSUs. 

CITU calls upon the working class to expose the deceit and deception of the Govt. CITU demands withdrawal of price hike in petrol and end of the present pricing anarchy in the name of deregulation of petroleum pricing.

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