Protesting against the Central Government’s decision to increase the prices of natural gas from April, hundreds of Rastriya Janta Dal (RJD) activists burned the effigy of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at Naya More in Bokaro on Wednesday.
Blaming that the gas price hike will hit the Indian economy, the RJD youth wing has demanded immediate roll back of the price hike decision.
Only to benefit Reliance Industries ltd. (RIl), the UPA Government has decided to double the price of the natural gas, blamed Samar Bahadur, president of the RJD Youth Wing in Bokaro.
Under the Government’s new gas pricing mechanism, gas prices are likely to almost double from the current 4.2 US dollar to 8.4 US dollar per million British thermal units —which is applicable for five years — beginning from April 1, 2014, said Samar adding that “the RIl would be the biggest gainers from this price hike”.
“The increase in gas price will raise the Government’s revenues through royalty; increased the profitability of the producers too”, he added.
The revenues of exploration and production (producers) will increase both in the public and private sectors. Such an increase will depend on the actual exploration and production costs, the profit share, gas price and more, he said.
Gas price hike would badly hit to fertiliser units as the price of urea (used by farmers in the field) will be increased by `55,000 per tons with an increase in the gas price. Retail consumers will also be badly affected as they will have to pay more for electricity, Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) used as auto fuel and Piped Natural Gas (PNG) for cooking, Samar said. “It also hits power production cost as the power industries are a major consumer of natural gas”, added Samar.