Congress President Rahul Gandhi posted the video on his Twitter account on Wednesday. (File)
Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over rising prices of petrol and diesel. He posted a video on his Twitter account on the issue calling PM Modi as ‘king of misinformation’. In the video, the Prime Minister is seen at a rally talking about reducing petrol and diesel prices. The video is interspersed with clippings of Bollywood actor Salman Khan who bursts into peals of laughter.
The poor & the middle class bear the brunt of rising fuel prices. In this video, our PM is quite obviously talking about some other country. #PeTrolledpic.twitter.com/J6PHC7UsJZ
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) April 4, 2018
Gandhi tweeted using “#PeTrolled” as the hashtag.
Gandhi and Congress have alleged that despite the decline in international crude oil prices, the rates of petrol and diesel have been rising due to heavy taxes imposed by the BJP government.
India has the highest retail prices of petrol and diesel among South Asian nations as taxes account for half of the pump rates.
State-owned oil companies — Indian Oil Corporation, Bharat Petroleum Corporation and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation — in June last year had dumped the 15-year old practice of revising rates on the 1st and 16th of every month. Now the rates are being revised on a daily basis based on changing global markets.
On April 2, petrol prices hit a four-year high on the first Monday of the new financial year at Rs 73.83 per litre, while diesel reached an all-time high at Rs 64.69 per litre. The hike in fuel prices came amid strengthening of global crude oil prices. The current hike in petrol is highest since September, 2013 when it jumped to Rs 76.
Earlier this year, the Oil Ministry had sought a reduction in excise duty on petrol and diesel to cushion the impact of rising international oil rates. However, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his Budget presented on February 1 ignored those calls.
Between November 2014 and January 2016, the excise duty had been raised nine times to shore up finances as global oil prices fell. The government had slashed tax just once in October last year by Rs 2 a litre. The excise duty cut cost the government Rs 26,000 crore in annual revenue and about Rs 13,000 crore during the remaining part of the current fiscal year.
With inputs from PTI.