NCP’s turn to bite Cong on prices

In the backdrop of agitation against hike in diesel and LPG prices, Pawar's party settles scores with ally

NCP's turn to bite Cong on prices

In the backdrop of agitation against hike in diesel and LPG prices, Pawar's party settles scores with ally

With rampant protests marking the government's decision to tee up petro-prices, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) has found the perfect rebuttal to its coalition partner's oblique comments blaming its leader and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar for food inflation last year.

After the announcement of the hike in the prices of diesel, cooking gas and kerosene, the Pawar-led party wasted no time to vent vitriol on its senior partner at the Centre as well as in the state. Its leaders castigated the hike by the Centre even as they urged party workers to raise Cain over inflation.

First, Deputy CM Ajit Pawar said on Saturday that the decision to hike the price of cooking gas cylinders by Rs 50 was unacceptable and NCP workers should storm the streets to agitate against it.

The next day, Union Rural Development Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh termed the statement as inappropriate and quoted Spiderman's dying uncle to say that "with power, comes responsibility", implying that while in the government, one has to share the responsibility and not just the power.

As you sow..
The NCP strategy became clearer on Monday when Home Minister R R Patil reacted sharply to Deshmukh's comment. He said that the moralising by Deshmukh would have been appropriate had Pawar not been singled out to be the scapegoat for rising prices of food grains last year.

Between January 2010 and January 2011, the Congress squarely dumped the blame on Pawar for the insufferable inflation.
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"As minister for agriculture, food and distribution, consumer affairs, the issue of prices squarely falls in Pawar's turf," Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari had said last year, when Pawar additionally held those portfolios. General Secretary Rahul Gandhi also blamed the snowballing rates on coalition politics earlier this year.

"Even as the global market witnessed price rise last year, Congress leaders spared no chance to criticise Pawar.
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It was not proper to target Pawar," said the Home Minister at Mantralaya. With his statement, the political bric-a-bats may get more caustic in the coming days, even as Congress tries to get into damage control mode.

Relief to state?
Meanwhile, CM Prithviraj Chavan assured a Congress delegation of bringing in tax-relief measures to ease the burden on the common man.

He said that there was a need to strike a balance, as revenue from such tax sources (see box) funds several development and welfare projects. A Cabinet meeting at Mantralaya will peruse the matter today.

Tax revenue?
The state earnsRs 9,000 crore every year through Motor Spirit Tax applicable on petrol and diesel. In the last fiscal, it collected Rs 5,800 crore from diesel and Rs 3,200 crore from petrol. Given the massive revenue the taxes rake in for the state scrapping them could prove troublesome.