SHILLONG:
At a time when soaring inflation is burning a hole into the pockets of the common man and protest against it are grabbing headlines across the country, the state government, on Wednesday, said that it is “yet to take a call” on the crucial issue.
“We are yet to take call on the issue. The Chief Minister may convene a meeting on the issue and post that, we will take necessary decisions on the matter,” said Deputy Chief Minister Prestone Tynsong.
Calling it a national issue, the deputy chief minister also urged the Centre to step in and jointly address the crucial issue. “The Centre and the states have to jointly take a call on this as it is happening everywhere in the country,” Tynsong added.
He, however, sang the same tune as that of the Centre when deliberating on the exorbitant hike in fuel prices and attributed it to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. “The war has affected not only these two countries but everyone globally. Therefore, this is a global issue and not of the country alone,” he said.
The deputy chief minister’s statement however, doesn’t seem to hold much water as according to a leading global commodities data and analytics firm, Kpler, India’s import of Russian crude oil in March 2022 was nearly four times higher when compared to the same period in 2021.
And for some time now, various media reports and experts have opined that this was possible because India imported oil at discounted rates from Russia which is shunned by many countries due to the conflict in Ukraine.