KOLKATA: Petrol price breached the Rs 80 mark in Kolkata on Thursday, marking a four-year high, four days after the
price of diesel climbed to an unprecedented Rs 70 a litre in the city. More than 90% of the city’s vehicles, including both public and private transport as well as goods-carrying vehicles, run on these two fuels.
A litre of petrol sold at Rs 80.12 in Kolkata on Thursday and diesel sold at Rs 71.08 a litre. Diesel, however, has become dearer faster than petrol, which has reduced the gap between petrol and diesel prices to about Rs 9, an unusual occurrence if one analyses the price difference in the last one-and-a-half decades.
The simultaneous skyrocketing of the two most-used fuels in the city means that family budgets may get squeezed on multiple fronts:
fuel bills for families that own small cars have already reached levels last seen in 2014; and there has been increasing clamour from
public transport operators, demanding a hike in bus and cab fares.
Truckers firm on June 18 strike call
Cabbies, truckers and petroleum dealers have stuck to their decision of participating in the June 18 strike. About 40% of buses have already gone off road. “We gave the government an ultimatum to revise the fare within May 25. But no action has been taken so far. The extra-ordinary spike in diesel prices has put the private bus trade in coma. We are not going to call a strike but buses will automatically go off the road,” Joint Council of Bus Syndicates’
Tapan Bandyopadhyay said.
The last time Kolkata saw petrol prices move up beyond the Rs-80 mark was in 2014. The price of the fuel used in most family-owned cars breached the Rs-80 barrier on January 5, 2014, and stayed above this mark till April 2014. The petrol price rose again in July 2014, reaching Rs 81.43 a litre, before it started sliding in August. The highest price petrol recorded in recent history was in 2013, when a litre cost Rs 83.63 on September 14.
Representative Image