Hyderabad, January 18: Opposition leader N Chandrababu Naidu will undertake a bicycle rally against petro price hike on January 22.
Naidu, along with party leaders, will ride a bicycle from NTR Bhavan to Indira Park on Jan 22 covering around 7 km. The bicycle rally will culminate into a dharna at Indira Park.
Naidu called upon the party activists to stage protest demonstrations against petro price hike on Jan 22 in all the 294 Assembly segments.
Naidu held a meeting with party seniors today on the programmes to be taken up by the party against the hike.
Speaking to reporters later, the Opposition leader said the actual cost of petrol per litre, including production charges, was around Rs 20. But, the Central and the State governments were imposing taxes of Rs 25 and Rs 21 respectively taking the price to Rs 66 per litre, Naidu explained.
The total petroleum products sales was Rs 1.8 lakh crore roughly. The Centre was imposing Excise duty, Customs duty and service tax.
Sales tax was being levied on the income generated from the sale of petrol and diesel. Of the Rs 1.8 lakh crore, around Rs 1.3 lakh crore was going back to the Centre in the form of taxes.
“Can’t the Centre bear the burden?” he asked.
Naidu opposed the hike at a time when all the major oil companies were earning huge profits. “The Indian Oil Corporation earned Rs 16,654 cr profit between September 2009 and September 2010,” Naidu said.
He demanded that the State government should reduce VAT on the sale of petroleum products.
While the Orissa government imposed 18 pc tax, the state government was collecting 33 pc VAT on petro-products, Naidu said.
Though several State governments had scrapped the 4 pc VAT on domestic gas refills and Karnataka reduced it to 1 pc, the State government was still collecting 4 pc VAT, he said.
Except AP government, no other State government was collecting 4 pc VAT on kerosene, he said.
–Agencies