Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas and Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri reiterated here on Sunday that some States, including Kerala, were responsible for not bringing the petrol and diesel prices down.
Addressing the media, Mr. Puri said that the Union government had slashed the central excise duty two times in the last two years. Although the people in Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP)-ruled States had benefited from that as the State governments too reduced their taxes, some States did not allow the people to enjoy those benefits, he said.
“I haven’t come here to blame anyone on petrol prices. The Central government, at a time when it was feeding 80 crore people with three meals a day, still brought the excise duty down. Blame it on those States which did allow the prices to come down by reducing their taxes,” he said.
