The Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) has decided to organise protests across Telangana State on Friday in protest against the hike in the prices of domestic cooking gas.
The prices of domestic cooking gas and commercial cylinders have been hiked by Rs 50 and Rs 350.5 per cylinder respectively with effect from March 1.
Reacting sharply to the hike, BRS working president K T Rama Rao held a teleconference with ministers, MLAs, MLCs and the party's district presidents and directed them to organise protest programs in their respective areas across the State on Friday.
During the teleconference, KTR lambasted the BJP government at the Centre for continuously putting financial burden on the poor people, and derisively termed the hike of cooking gas prices as a gift to the women on the occasion of International Women's Day which is celebrated on March 8.
Rao said that the price of domestic cylinders was Rs 400 per cylinder till 2014, and under the tenure of Prime Minister Narendra Modi since then had crept up to Rs 1,200.
He also said that even the beneficiaries of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana launched by the union government to distribute LPG connections to the women of Below Poverty Line (BPL) families were not in a position to bear the new prices of cooking gas cylinders.
The BRS working president demanded that the union government roll back the hikes immediately.
filed in:Telangana, BRS, Protests, K T Rama Rao, Centre