A high powered ministerial panel on revision of
diesel, domestic cooking gas and kerosene prices, headed by
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, is unlikely to meet this month.
Battling backlash from within and outside to the steep Rs 7.54 a litre hike in petrol prices, the government doesn't want to open a new front with its allies like TMC by calling a meeting of the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) soon, a top government official said.
"In my perception, the EGoM will not meet soon...certainly not this month," he said.
The government perhaps is buying time to let flared tempers cool before calling the meeting of the EGoM where the Congress party's ruling allies Trinamool Congress and DMK are also represented.
The EGoM has not met in almost a year even though depreciation in the rupee and rise in international oil prices raised cost of imports.
"The logic in favour of increase in price of diesel is unassailable but politics and logic don't go together," Oil Minister S Jaipal Reddy told reporters earlier. "What is desirable is known. Politics is the art of making desirable (politically) acceptable."
Unlike petrol, the prices of diesel, LPG and kerosene, which are regulated commodities, cannot be revised by the petroleum ministry or the oil companies themselves. "EGoM alone is empowered to do so," he said.
"I have been urging that a meeting be convened. I don't know when it will be convened," he said.
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