Delhi (The Stellar News) Saksham Kalia: In this lethal Pandemic of Corona Virus a lot of people got unemployed and many faced cuts in their salaries. Not just citizens, Country GDP also faced financial crisis. Amid the pandemic the incomes of citizens and government are at full stop. So, government focused on the petrol and diesel prices to generate taxes for managing the country expenditures.
But this is not the first time when Modi government took petrol and diesel as the major revenue generating product. Just after coming in power Modi government started increasing the excise duties and other taxes on Petrol and Diesel contrary to the commitments made during election campaigning.
After the triggering discussion on the price hike of Petrol and Diesel in the country, Union Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan gave reason of hike in crude oil rates in international market. But the shocking thing is that before the BJP government the rate of crude oil in international market was more than $100/barrel and the price of Petrol was Rs 74/litre. While the current rate of Crude oil is near to $73/barrel but the Petrol price is touching Rs 100/litre in various parts of the country.
Acc. To Data, Excise duty on petrol has been raised from ₹9.48 per litre in 2014 to ₹32.90 a litre now while the same on diesel has gone up from ₹3.56 a litre to ₹31.80. Taxes make up for 60 per cent of the present retail price of petrol of ₹91.17 a litre in Delhi. Excise duty makes up for 36 per cent of the retail price.
From the price of a petrol/ litre, about Rs 32.90 or 35.53 percent is charged as the Central government’s ‘Excise Duty’ and about Rs 21.36 or 23 percent is what the state levies. Put together, taxes account for Rs 54.26 or 58.60 percent of the price of petrol in the capital city.
This is strange that government is using the essential needs of citizens as the tax generating product. This is compulsory to collect tax but who will decide the limits of the taxes, can be applied on a single product.
