Jaipur, Apr 28 (PTI) Rajasthan Congress chief Govind Singh Dotasra on Thursday said the Centre should ponder over its responsibility of reducing fuel prices instead of asking states to cut tax.
He said the excise duty was Rs 9.20 per litre on petrol and Rs 3.46 per litre on diesel in 2014, but had now shot up to Rs 27.90 and Rs 21.80 per litre, respectively.
“Keeping the future Assembly elections in mind, Prime Minister Narendra Modi intends to present himself clean. He wants to fight the elections by blaming the states for high fuel prices. He wants to garner votes by misleading the people, which is not going to happen,” Dotasra told reporters at a press conference.
His reaction comes a day after the prime minister, during his address to leaders of various states, urged them to cut taxes on fuel in the “spirit of cooperative federalism”.
“What a situation are we witnessing in the country due to inflation today? If he (Modi) had paid attention to it, he would not have said this (asking states to cut fuel taxes). The BJP and the RSS have a habit of blaming others for their failures and misleading the people, and this is not right,” Dotasra said.
He said Rajasthan was losing an annual revenue of Rs 6,000 crore on fuel after reducing Value Added Taxes, but the prime minister quoted revenue losses only to Gujarat and Karnataka during his Wednesday address, as those states were heading for Assembly elections.
While Gujarat is slated to go to polls later this year, elections are scheduled to be held in Karnataka next year.
Dotasra also accused the state BJP leaders of creating an environment of religious polarisation and spreading communal hysteria to “malign” the Congress government. PTI AG AG CJ CJ
This report is auto-generated from PTI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.
Source: The Print
