The Congress on Tuesday rejected as “falsehood” the claim that the prices of petroleum products were high because of oil bonds issued by the previous regime, arguing that the Narendra Modi government was fleecing the poor to fill its coffers and to make up for lower tax collection from the corporates.

Former finance minister P. Chidambaram said in a series of tweets: “The finance minister’s statement that servicing oil bonds stands in the way of giving relief on petrol and diesel prices is astonishing. At best the statement is incredible ignorance; at the worst it is motivated malignity.”

Congress general secretary Ajay Maken said: “Since 2014-15, the Modi government has spent Rs 73,440 crore on servicing of oil bonds. Against this, they have collected Rs 22.34 lakh crore through taxes on petroleum products. Spending on servicing of oil bonds is barely 3.2 per cent of the tax collection from petroleum products. The real reason is not oil bonds but reduction in subsidy by 12 times and increase of taxes by three times.”

The Congress was responding to finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s statement on Monday that there will be no cut in excise duty on fuel as they are facing additional burden because of oil bonds issued by the previous UPA government. Arguing that the UPA had reduced fuel prices by issuing oil bonds of Rs 1.44 lakh crore, she had said: “I can’t go by the trickery that was played by previous the UPA government. Due to oil bonds, the burden has come to our government, that’s why we are unable to reduce prices of petrol and diesel.”

Sitharaman didn’t release figures to back her charge but the Congress responded with detailed data, saying: “The official figures of the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell reveal that the UPA government gave subsidy on petroleum products to the tune of Rs 1.64 lakh crore in 2012-13 and Rs 1.47 lakh crore in 2013-14. The Modi government drastically reduced this amount year after year and it is just Rs 12,231 crore in 2020-21.

“In 2020-21 alone, ‘Modi tax’ on petrol-diesel was Rs 453,812 crore. It is three times more than 2013-14. The BJP government raised central taxes on petrol and diesel by Rs 23.87 and Rs 28.37 per litre in seven years and collected additional Rs 189,711 crore every year.”

Maken said: “Since the lockdown, the increase on excise duties on petrol and diesel has surpassed all forms of exploitation and extortion. In the last 15 months, the insensitive government had raised petrol and diesel rates by Rs 32.25 and Rs 27.58 per litre respectively.”

Pointing to the denial of benefit to the consumers despite drastic fall in international crude prices, Maken said: “Because of the lowering of corporate tax, the government needs more money to match its spending. The cost of lower corporate tax rates for the government is being borne by citizens in the form of higher petrol and diesel prices. In 2017-18, the corporate tax collections amounted to a total of 3.34 per cent of the GDP and fell to 2.32 per cent of the GDP in 2020-21. This was despite the listed companies registering bumper profits during the financial year.”

Maken added: “Corporate taxes have come down primarily on account of the base tax rate being cut from 30 per cent to 22 per cent in September 2019 and to 15 per cent from the earlier 25 per cent for new manufacturing companies. In absolute terms, the total corporate tax collected in 2019-20 had stood at Rs 5.57 lakh crore. It fell to Rs 4.57 lakh crore in 2020-21, thanks to lower tax rates. To compensate for this to some extent, the government has increased the excise duty on petroleum products.”