Reduce fuel prices significantly, rationalise GST: Tharoor

TIL Desk/Business/New Delhi/ Accusing the Narendra Modi-led dispensation of “using the tax on fuel as a means to fill the Centre’s coffers,” Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has demanded the government to significantly reduce taxes and cess on fuel and import duty on essential commodities. Besides, he also wanted the Centre to rationalise and simplify the GST rates on household items.

 “We demand significant reduction in taxes and cess on fuel, reduce import duty on essential commodities,” he said. Hitting out at the Centre for “complete disregard” for the common man, the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha MP claimed that the central government had collected about Rs 4.2 lakh crore last year by way of tax on petrol and diesel alone.

 “This is three times more than the sum collected during its previous regime,” he said, addressing a press conference at TNCC headquarters Sathyamurthy Bhavan in Chennai.

The senior leader said during its tenure, the UPA government collected a cess of Rs 6.45 per litre on petrol and gave Rs 3 to the states. “Now the BJP government has dramatically raised the prices of fuel and still the state governments are given Rs 3,” he added.

In a lighter vein he remarked, “I see some of you wearing face masks. It’s suffocating (to wear masks continuously). We are feeling all the more suffocated by the alarming rise in the prices of fuel during the last seven years of the BJP rule…it is outrageous,” Tharoor said.