Chennai: Slamming the Rs 3.46 hike in domestic cooking gas price, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa yesterday said it could be construed as “taking revenge” against the voters for showing thumbs down to Congress in the just-concluded Assembly elections.
“People had used their votes as a weapon against price rise in the recent elections but the Congress-led coalition government doesn't seem to bothered about it,” she said in a statement here.
“By passing on the burden of the distribution cost of Rs 3.46 on people, it looks like Congress (led) coalition government is working (with the intention) of taking revenge against the people,” she said.
Congress lost assembly elections in Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.
After affecting motorists and common people by hiking the prices of petrol and diesel, UPA government has now “hit” the poor women by hiking LPG rates, and this was “condemnable,” she said.
Instead of taking steps to mitigate skyrocketing prices, resorting to such steps meant unnecessarily piling up burden on people, she said.
On oil companies' contention that the price rise was effected since commission amount had been hiked, she said it would be fair for the government to take this burden at a time when price rise was severely affecting people.
Instead of doing that, passing on the burden to people showed the Centre's “utter callousness” towards people's sentiments, she said, while demanding that the government roll back the hike besides working out modalities to further reduce LPG prices.
