Chennai: 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 Pattali Makkal Katchi demanded a rollback 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 (OMCs) with hiking fuel prices without taking into account the impact it would have on the common people.
"The status of Rupee-Dollar exchange 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 February 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 August 2014 and diesel six times since October 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 was not passed on to consumers.
"Only the Union government should explain if it is fair to burden consumers with a hike when the prices of global crude shoot up and when the full benefit of oil price cuts was not passed on to them."
PMK founder leader S Ramadoss urged that the increase in the price of fuel be rolled back. He said the prices of essential commodities could increase due to the hike.
He accused the Centre and OMCs of not following a "honest approach" in fixing domestic fuel prices in tune with global oil price.
CPI(M) said "the increase is unacceptable. The Politburo of the party calls upon all its units to organise protests against this hike."
It said that the union government, instead of reducing the excise duty, was passing on the burden to the people.
