Cong snubs Didi's protest against petrol price hike

NEW DELHI: A day after Trinamool Congress chief and railway minister Mamata Banerjee lodged a formal protest with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh against the recent hike in petrol prices and criticised the dismantling of administered price mechanism for petrol, Congress snubbed the UPA ally and came out in support of the government’s decision.

The party, which supported the government’s June 2010 decision to allow market forces to determine petrol prices, indicated that there was no possibility of the policy being revisited just because Trinamool Congress expressed dissatisfaction with it. “We value the views of each of our coalition partners. But merely because a view has been expressed by an ally, the policy will not be changed. There are inevitable exigencies which need to be taken into account for a price rise,” Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said.

Banerjee had written a letter to the prime minister explaining how a `5 hike in a month in petrol prices was unfair. Demanding a rollback, she had pointed out that this had happened because the government had done away with the administered price mechanism and allowed market forces to kick in. She had taken a grim view of the decision, especially since the hike have come just before the West Bengal assembly elections.

She had pointed out that she or other allies were not consulted before the Congress-led UPA government allowed the oil companies to effect the recent price hike. When the government had taken the decision to dismantle the administered price mechanism and decontrol petrol prices, Trinamool had protested.