After 16 days of relentless price hike, fuel prices were cut by just 1 paisa per litre on Wednesday. The marginal reduction in fuel prices had its share of excitement with State-owned Indian Oil Corp (IOC) earlier announcing a cut of 60 paise — the biggest since daily price revision was introduced in mid-June last year — only to retract it within a couple of hours citing a technical error.
The news triggered jokes on Twitter, where many vented their ire at the negligible reduction.
“ONE paisa!IJIJ If this is your idea of a prank, it’s childish and in poor taste,” tweeted Congress president Rahul Gandhi. The Congress too posted a meme mocking
BJP supporters on its official handle.
Earlier correcting the “technical error”, the IOC in a statement said, “There was a technical glitch in posting the selling prices of petrol and diesel. The selling prices of petrol and diesel with effect from May 30, 2018 have been rectified. Today, there is a minor reduction in fuel prices.”
The 1 paisa cut comes after 16 consecutive price increases since May 14 when fuel retailers ended a 19-day pre-Karnataka poll hiatus to pass on the spike in global crude rates. Petrol price was increased by Rs 3.8 per litre and diesel by Rs 3.38 in the last fortnight.
“There is softening in international oil prices and rupee has strengthened against the US dollar, making imports cheaper. All this will reflect in reduction in retail rates in coming days,” the official added.
However, Opposition leaders, including Congress president Rahul Gandhi, were quick to slam the minor reduction.
Besides politicians, who took a dig at the negligible cut in fuel prices on the social media, Twitter was also flooded with hashtags and messages about the price cut, making fun of the situation. '#petrolled', '#fuelonfire', '#petrolprice' and '#fuel' were among the hashtags trending on Twitter besides various memes.
One user posted a picture of long gone 5 paise coin, saying, “My savings today after filling 5 litres of petrol.” Another user said, “I am going to invest it in mutual funds now.”
The Opposition parties have been demanding the Government to cut excise duty, which it had raised 9 times when oil prices had fallen between 2014 and early 2016, to give relief to consumers.
The price effected from Wednesday is based on average international rate from May 15 to May 29.
For Thursday’s rate, the average from May 16 to May 30 will be taken. Rates had on Tuesday touched an all-time high of Rs 78.43 per litre for petrol and Rs 69.31 a litre for diesel in Delhi. Prices vary from State to State depending on VAT.
Delhi has the cheapest price among all metros and most State capitals.
Reacting to massive public comments on the social media last week, Oil Minister Dharemndra Pradhan had then said the Government is panning “holistic strategy” to reduce the oil prices in the country.
However, Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg had on Monday also stated that fuel prices are expected to cool in the next two or three days.
last week, the Government had stated that it is working on a long-term solution to address the volatility in fuel prices. The BJP-led Government, in June last year, junked a 15-year old practice of revising rates every fortnight and moved to daily revisions.
Meanwhile, the Kerala Government reduced the tax levies on fuel by Rs 1. The move, effective from June 1, comes amid growing clamour for an excise duty cut to bring down skyrocketing fuel prices.