By IANS,
Lucknow : Hundreds of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Samajwadi Party (SP) activists clashed with police Saturday in parts of Uttar Pradesh while protesting the hike in the prices of diesel, kerosene and cooking gas.
Demanding a rollback, the BJP and the SP activists burnt effigies of the central government in various districts, including Lucknow, Meerut, Jalaun, Allahabad and Varanasi. Police used mild force to disperse the agitators at these places.
Shouting anti-United Progressive Alliance (UPA) slogans, the BJP and SP activists blocked roads at several places in this state capital.
“The union government merely projects that it is working for the common man. The reality is that the Manmohan Singh government is really not bothered about the common man,” state BJP spokesperson Vijay Pathak told reporters.
“The government has miserably failed to contain inflation and therefore lost every moral right to remain in power,” he added.
Echoing similar views, SP spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary told reporters: “The hike in the prices is unjustified. Instead of listening to the complaints of the common man, the centre has been imposing a big burden of price spiral on the people.”
Petroleum Minister S. Jaipal Reddy Friday announced that the price of diesel will be increased by Rs.3 per litre, kerosene by Rs.2 per litre and domestic liquid petroleum gas (LPG) by Rs.50 per cylinder, excluding state levies such as VAT.