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New Delhi: A concerned Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has asked its chief ministers to consider reducing taxes on petroleum products in a bid to shield the masses from rising fuel prices.
Party chief Rajnath Singh spoke to chief ministers of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat and Karnataka and asked them to extend relief to consumers after the federal government announced a steep hike in prices of petrol, diesel and liquefied petroleum gas.
According to BJP spokesman Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Singh also spoke to chief ministers of other states where the party is a junior partner in power. They include Bihar, Punjab and Orissa.
The BJP was caught on the wrong foot with the Congress strategy of raising prices of petroleum products followed by tax cuts by its state governments leaving it with no option but to follow suit.
While two non-Congress states, namely the Left-ruled West Bengal and the Congress-supported DMK government in Tamil Nadu announced reduction in taxes, the provincial government in Delhi announced a subsidy of Rs40 on each liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cylinder yesterday, effectively reducing the extra burden on the end user to just Rs10.
Delhi along with Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan are slated to elect their new legislative assemblies in November this year. Any hike in LPG prices directly hits the consumers. Delhi government would lose about Rs1.65 billion every year on this account. However, unlike West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, it did not reduce taxes on petrol and diesel.
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