CPM state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan demanded that the LPG cylinder quota should be fixed to at least 12 per family in a year and warned of state-wide agitation if the Centre failed to rollback the prices of petroleum products.
Addressing a press conference here on Sunday, he said that the CPM would take out a protest march to all LPG bottling plants in the state, distributing agencies and Civil Supplies offices on October 10.
“In Kerala, families require at least 12 cylinders per year and limiting it to six would make the lives of the people miserable. The State Government said that it would allocate three additional subsidised cylinders to BPL families. But none of the BPL families rely on LPG and in effect none will get the benefit,” he said.
He said that the UPA Government’s action of giving huge concessions to corporates, while doing away with the subsidy on LPG, showed that they don’t care for problems affecting the public.
“Both the UPA Government and the State Government are neglecting the problems of the public. All oil companies registered huge profits last year and what is the need for the price hike? If the profit of ONGC was Rs 25,123 crore, for IOC it was Rs 4,265 crore. It was Rs 911 crore for HPCL and Bharat Petroleum registered Rs 1,516 crore profit,” he said.
“The total tax revenue from the petroleum sector to the government last year stood at Rs 2.25 lakh crore,” he said.
Pinarayi Vijayan warned that if the State Government neglects the ongoing protest of Kudumbashree Protection Samithi, in front of the Secretariat, then the protest would be intensified in the coming days.
“Chief Minister Oommen Chandy should interfere immediately to solve the issue. Janashree Mission, is a pro-Congress organisation and sanctioning of funds to it should be withdrawn. An attempt is underway from certain quarters to torpedo the functioning of the Kudumbashree Mission and the poverty alleviation programmes,” he said.
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