Thaindian News

Lucknow, May 18 (IANS) Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) president Mayawati Wednesday issued guidelines to her party men for staging a state wide protest May 31 against the recently announced hike in petrol price.

All senior BSP office-bearers were present at the meeting chaired by Mayawati.

She accused the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government of furthering the interests of the corporate sector.

“During the worst ever recession in 2008-2009 the central government doled out a subsidy package of Rs.4 lakh crore to the corporate sector, which continued even in 2009-2010 when the country’s economic growth registered an increase to 6.8 percent,” Mayawati alleged.

“Now, when the growth has further gone up to 8 percent, the union government has made a provision of Rs.4.5 lakh crore worth of subsidies to the corporate sector, which shows where the interest of the people on power lies,” she added.

The chief minister said: “If the government had least concern for the common people, its leaders would have kept a fraction of that whopping subsidy for petrol products to help lessen the pressures on account of the petrol price hike.”

Mayawati also told her party men to make it a point to apprise the people of the measures taken by her government to cut down the state levies on petrol and petroleum products.

“We exempted cooking gas from state taxes, reduced VAT on diesel from 21 percent to 17 and brought down the VAT on kerosene to an all time low of 5 percent”, Mayawati pointed out.