Maharashtra BJP president Chandrakant Patil on Thursday demanded that the state government reduce the Value Added Tax (VAT) on petrol and diesel, after the Centre recently cut the excise duty on the fuels.
Speaking to reporters in Kolhapur, Patil said they have organised an agitation across Maharashtra to press for the demand, as around 11 states in the country, some of them not even governed by the BJP, have slashed the VAT on fuels to provide relief to the common man.
"If those states can provide the relief, why the MVA government is hesitating to do so? The Centre cut the excise duty on petrol by Rs 5 per litre and on diesel by Rs 10. As a cascading effect, the prices got reduced by an additional Re 1 in some states. However, it (VAT) is a gold mine of revenue for the Maharashtra government, hence it has refused to slash the rates," he claimed.
To a query on state minister Nawab Malik, who has levelled various allegations against BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis and others, Patil said, "Malik has admitted that he had bought land from 1993 Mumbai serial blasts convicts. I demand that the N N Vohra committee's report be made public. It has some explosive information about the criminalisation of politics and how it later led to the Mumbai bomb blast."
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