NEW DELHI, Feb 9:
Drawing a parallel between the excise duty on petroleum products and the Jizya tax imposed by Mughal emperor Aurangazeb, Congress leader Kapil Sibal on Wednesday launched a blistering attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“In 2014, the price of petrol was Rs 71 per litre. In 2022 it is Rs 95. During UPA Government, the central excise on petrol was Rs 9.2 per litre. Now it is Rs 27.
This is a hike of 203 per cent. Diesel used to be sold in Rs 55 per litre in times of UPA, today it is Rs 86. The excise duty used to be Rs 3.46 a litre, now it is Rs 21. That means a 530 per cent hike,” Sibal told the Rajya Sabha during a discussion on the General Budget. Sibal said the excise duty structure in Modi Government was worse than the Jizya tax Aurangzeb imposed in 1679.
“Ahmed Shah imposed Jizya tax in 1414, later Emperor Akbar abolished it. Aurangzeb again started Jizya in 1679. But he said that the tax will not be imposed on the poor. Aurangzeb at least spared the downtrodden segments,” Sibal said.
“And you are talking about amrit kaal… I am witnessing Rahu kaal from 2014,” said Sibal, referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement.
“Here ‘tukde tukde’ was discussed the other day. The one who does ‘tukde tukde’ of civilization, the one who does ‘tukde tukde’ of history, the Constitution and the brotherhood is the leader of the ‘tukde tukde’ gang,” Sibal said, targeting the Prime Minister.
He said the Union Budget had no vision and no real long term plan. Sibal listed out statistics of unemployment in all neighbouring countries and said: “You can juggle data but not juggle facts.”
The former HRD Minister asked Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to invest on universities for creation of more wealth. (UNI)
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