TN Opposition parties, NDA ally PMK flay fuel price hike

PMK says OMCs hiked prices considering impact on common man, rejects rupee-dollar exchange rate as decision driver

Opposition parties in Tamil Nadu, including DMK and CPI(M) and NDA ally PMK, have condemned the hike in prices of petrol and diesel and demanded a roll back of prices.

The Karunanidhi-led party urged the Union government to fix fuel prices and slammed the Centre for effecting another increase in fuel prices within a two week span. NDA ally PMK demanded a roll back of increase in prices. “It is the expectation of all sections of people that the Centre should take the responsibility to fix prices of petrol and diesel to ensure that ordinary people are not affected,” he said in a statement here.

He charged oil marketing companies with hiking fuel prices without taking into account the impact it would have on the common people. “The status of currency rate is also cited as a reason for hike and this is not fully acceptable.” Yesterday, petrol price was hiked by Rs 3.18 per litre and diesel by Rs 3.09, the second increase in a span of 14 days.

The earlier increase was effected on Feb 16 with a hike of 82 paise for petrol and 61 paise for diesel. This reversed a trend of 10 successive cuts for petrol since Aug 2014 and diesel six times since Oct 2014. Karunanidhi sought to know if it was fair to burden people with successive price hikes when the full benefit of global crude oil cuts were not passed.