After an hour-long meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Communist Party of India general secretary A B Bardhan told reporters that the government is all se to raise the prices of petrol and diesel within the next 2-3 days.
Asked whether their five-point suggestions to minimise the impact of the price hike on the common man had been taken into account, Bardhan said, "even after considering our suggestions, they (government) feel that the prices have to be increased".
He, however, hoped that the prices of LPG and kerosene would not be touched.
Bardhan, who was accompanied at the meeting with his party colleague D Raja and Forward Bloc general secretary Debabrata Biswas, said they reiterated the views of the Left parties before the prime minister and also conveyed to him their opposition to any price hike.
The Left leaders said they had submitted a five-point plan to avert the hike in petrol and diesel prices and explore ways of minimising the impact on the people.
They suggested that the government should bear the burden of the hike on petrol and diesel prices due to the post-budget changes in the excise duty structure on petro products.
They also sought suspension of the road cess of Rs 2 per litre of petrol for the current year and suggested that as almost 90 per cent of the crude was imported, the international parity on prices should be imposed on crude oil and not petrol or any other petro product.
They also suggested that under-recovery by oil PSUs should not be the basis of calculating petro prices and the PSUs should not spend "hundreds of crore" on advertising, the burden of which was being imposed on the people.
