Cheaper to fly a plane than driving a car: AAP

The AAP demanded on Saturday that the Centre must reduce petrol and diesel prices in the wake of the reduced global crude oil prices, claiming that driving a vehicle in the country had been made more expensive than flying an aeroplane.

The comments came hours after the Centre hiked excise duty on petrol and diesel by a steep Rs 3 per litre each to garner about Rs 39,000 crore of additional revenue, repeating its 2014-15 move of not passing on gains arising from slump in international oil prices.

"In the past few years, the Centre has increased the excise rate nearly 12 times," Aam Aadmi Party leader Raghav Chadha said at a press conference. "Today, we are at a time when in our economy, the price of aviation fuel is cheaper than that of the per-litre price of petrol and diesel."
Petrol now costs Rs 69.87 a litre in Delhi and a litre of diesel comes for Rs 62.58, while the price of aviation fuel is Rs 56 per litre, Chadha said. "So today, it is cheaper to fly an aeroplane than driving a car."