People troubled, Centre must act, says Mamata Banerjee
The ruling party at the Centre which has completed four years in power recently became the target of Ms Banerjee often in the past.
Kolkata: Another round of fuel price hike has left Trinamul Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee furious against the Centre with her party declaring to hit the road and organise a protest against the decision within 24 hours. She has called the central government to “act”.
On Monday the chief minister alleged in Twitter, “Fuel prices are increasing again and again. All are being badly affected: agriculture, transport and common people are being forced to bear burden. In spite of the grim situation, why isn’t the Central Govt taking any serious steps to find a solution ? They need to act.”
Significantly any reference of the BJP, which is at the power in the Centre, remained missing in her attack which came two days after she shared the dais with Prime Minister Nardendra Modi at Visva Bharati at Santiniketan.
The ruling party at the Centre which has completed four years in power recently became the target of Ms Banerjee often in the past.
In the afternoon, Trinamul secretary general Partha Chatterjee declared that the youth wing workers of the ruling party would hold a sit-in demonstration at the Gandhi Statue to protest the fuel price hike.
“We have repeatedly demanded that the petro prices should not be hiked. The common people are burdened by such decisions,” he alleged.
Mr Chatterjee claimed, “As a result of these hike, cost of items of daily uses also goes up. The situation has spun out of control now. The Centre is taking away its share from the state revenue while it has drastically reduced the allocations of different central schemes and projects. In such a situation we will protest from 12 pm 5 pm on Tuesday.”
Asked why the state government was not reducing the various taxes to scale down the cost of petrol and diesel the parliamentary affairs minister argued, “It will be better if the Centre does not increase the amount of cess. If it does not do it then we also would not need to follow them subsequently. It appears that the central government root is tied somewhere else.”