The fuel rates vary from city to city and from pump to pump depending on local taxes and transportation cost. Delhi has the cheapest fuel rates among all metros and most state capitals because of lower taxes.
The hike in fuel cost has come days after the BJP-led Central government reduced excise duty on the transportation fuel, making it cheaper by upto Rs 5 on October 4. The government had on last Thursday announced a Rs 2.5 per litre cut in petrol and diesel prices, of which Rs 1.5 per litre is on account of reduction in excise duty. Additionally, the state-owned oil marketing companies (OMCs) have been mandated to reduce the prices of petrol and diesel by Re 1 a litre. The Centre was later joined by Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana Assam, Uttarakhand, Goa and Arunachal Pradesh with similar moves. Jammu and Kashmir, which is under governor's rule, too reduced tax on the two fuel.
Even before the excise duty cut, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh had last month reduced VAT to cushion consumers for a spate of price increases. The reduction in excise duty, only the second in four years of BJP-led NDA rule, will dent central government revenues by Rs 10,500 crore and was aimed at cooling retail prices that had shot up to an all-time high. The BJP-government at the Centre had raised excise duty on petrol by Rs 11.77 a litre and that on diesel by Rs 13.47 a litre in nine installments between November 2014 and January 2016 to shore up finances as global oil prices fell, but then cut the tax just once in October last year by Rs 2 a litre.