The Uttarakhand Congress organised a massive protest against increasing prices of diesel, petrol and cooking gas on Thursday. On the call given by the party, a large number of Congress leaders and workers assembled at the head office of the state unit. They formed a human chain from the party office which passed through Clock tower and Darshan Lal Chowk. Addressing the party workers, the Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) President, Pritam Singh said that the union government should immediately take back the hike in the prices of fossil fuels. Launching a blistering attack on the Narendra Modi led Union government; the PCC president said that from June 2014 to June 2020, the government has looted 80 lakh Crores of rupees from the public.

He said that the apathetic attitude of the union government can be understood from the fact that in the last three months of Covid-19 pandemic, the government increased Rs 21.50 on petrol and Rs 26.46 on diesel.  Singh said that the hike has hit the people hard who are already reeling under the consequences of the pandemic. He said that the Congress party would not tolerate the open loot of the Modi government and hold protests. Singh warned that the party would organise protests at district, block and Nyay Panchayat level.

After the programme of protest and human chain, the Congress workers dispatched a memorandum to the President through the district magistrate of Dehradun. In the memorandum the Congress while demanding an immediate roll back in prices of petrol and diesel said that by regularly increasing the excise duty on the petrol and diesel during the lockdown period in the last three months, the union government has created problems for the general public. The Congress claimed that in the last six years, the Union government has affected 820 percent hike in excise duty of diesel and 258 percent increase in excise duty of petrol.