Mumbai Congress holds 'tweet morcha' against rising fuel prices

Sanjay Nirupam

The Mumbai Congress on Sunday organised a "tweet morcha" to protest against continuously rising fuel prices. The protest, with the hashtag #cutfueltaxes and #tweetmorcha, got 7,629 tweets within one-and-half hours, the organisers said.

The Congress' Mumbai unit chief Sanjay Nirupam, along with author Sucheta Dalal, launched the tweet campaign at the Mumbai Marathi Patrakar Sangh.

"We launched this unique protest where people are tweeting to the Prime Minister and Maharashtra Chief Minister asking them to curb fuel prices," Nirupam said.

"The Prime Minister is extremely active on social media. However, protests on the ground don't seem to affect him much. So people across the country are forced to tweet to him today demanding fuel at an affordable price," Nirupam claimed.

He said that the protest was to put pressure on the "non-responsive" BJP governments at the Centre and in Maharashtra to act against rising fuel prices.

"Mumbai has been witnessing a consistent rise in fuel prices despite crude prices decreasing internationally. While this has disrupted the budget of the common man, the BJP government has reached new heights of insensitivity by reducing petrol prices by just one paise," Nirupam said.

Dalal said that high fuel prices had an inflationary effect as it increased transport charges which impacted prices of essential commodities and vegetables.

"The entire economy suffers while the government has been levying a series of unreasonable charges on fuel. This is highly unacceptable," she said.

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