He stated that, in the name of guarantees, no developmental activities are taking place in the state, and the state’s progress is zero. The state is financially bankrupt, and it will take several years to rectify this. The state Congress government is directly responsible for this, he asserted.

Questioning the fairness, he added, “How is it justifiable to impose taxes on the poor and extort money from them under the pretext of providing freebies while the Congress bakes its political bread on the suffering of the poor?”

The notification by the finance department in Karnataka, dated June 15, effected changes to the Karnataka Sales Tax Act. With this, the sales tax for petrol increased from 25.92 per cent to 29.84 per cent and for diesel, the rise was from 14.34 per cent to 18.44 per cent. Following the revision, the petrol price in Bengaluru is Rs 102.84 per litre, up from Rs 99.84, while the diesel price is Rs 88.95, up from Rs 85.93.

Siddaramaiah, in a press meet in Bengaluru, said the Narendra Modi government at the Centre created an environment in which the necessity of a tax increase was inevitable.

According to him, despite a significant drop in international crude oil prices after 2015, the Modi government continued to increase fuel prices without passing on the benefits to the country’s people.

“In the previous BJP government, 40 per cent of the tax money in every scheme of the state went into the pockets of BJP leaders. In this way, approximately one and a half lakh crore rupees of the hard-earned money of the people of the state filled the pockets of these BJP leaders,” he said.