By IANS,
Bhopal : Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and several of his cabinet colleagues Thursday evening pedalled their way to the state secretariat on cycles to protest the hike in prices of petroleum products.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ministers led by Chouhan started from the Chief Minister’s House at 4 p.m. and took nearly half an hour to travel the five km stretch to the state secretariat. The physical effort was evident from their faces, and some even alighted from their cycles and walked, but they did not give up.
Prominent among the ministers who joined the protest were IT Minister Kailash Vijayvargiya, Cooperatives Minister Gopal Bhargava and Water Resources Minister Anup Mishra.
Chouhan termed the unprecedented hike in the prices of diesel, petrol and cooking gas by the central government as a “body blow” to the people. He said it would make the life of the poor next to impossible, and also lead to hardship for the middle class and other sections of people.
Urging the prime minister to immediately roll back the prices in the larger interest of the people, the chief minister remarked that it appeared that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was more concerned about the loss to oil companies than the common people.