The Union Petroleum Minister Hardeep Singh Puri was quoted as saying in the media that the country had administered one billion doses of the vaccine, fed 90 crore people for one full year during the pandemic “providing 3 meals a day” and supplied free cooking gas refill to 8 crore poor beneficiaries. “All this and much more with that Rs. 32 a litre excise duty (levied by the Central government).” The minister said, adding that money collected from taxes also went into building roads, constructing houses for the poor and other social welfare schemes. The minister of state Rameshwar Teli also joined the chorus and said, ‘blame it on free vaccine’. Teli has also claimed that price of packaged mineral water is higher than petrol.BJP leaders have repeatedly justified the high prices of fuel by arguing that people used buses and only politicians were complaining about it. People would eventually get used to the high prices of petrol and diesel, they have said confidently.In a rare moment of introspection, Dharmendra Pradhan, former Union Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas said, “I accept that fuel prices are pinching consumers, there’s no doubt about this. But over Rs 35,000 crore have been spent on Covid vaccines in a year. Rs 1 lakh crore has been spent on Pradhan Mantri Gareeb Kalyan Yojana in order to provide eight months’ ration to the poor. A few thousand crores of rupees have also been transferred to farmers’ bank accounts under PM Kisan…In such dire times, we’re saving money to spend on welfare schemes.”Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Amit Malviya, who heads BJP’s IT Cell, blame the UPA Government for the fuel price hike. “The increased prices of petrol and diesel is a legacy of UPA’s mismanagement. We are paying for the oil bonds that will come up for redemption starting FY2021 till 26, which were issued by UPA to oil companies for not increasing retail prices then,” Malviya tweeted in June 2021.
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