Did Nirmala Sitharaman blame people for increase in petrol prices?
Social media users are claiming that Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said people are buying more vehicles which has resulted in a fuel hike.
By Tejal Sinha Published on 6 April 2022 5:55 AM GMT
Hyderabad: Social media users are claiming that Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said people are buying more vehicles which has resulted in a fuel hike.
The post is viral on Twitter and can be viewed here.
Fact Check
The claim is False.
NewsMeter firstly noticed that the viral news card had the logo of News 7 Tamil. We then searched for the viral news card on the social media handles of the organization. The search led us to a post uploaded on the Facebook page of 'News 7 Tamil' on March 28, 2022.
The post had shared the viral news card and stated the news card to be fake.
We then searched for news reports on whether the Finance Minister had made any such statement. According to the information published by the mainstream media, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman had blamed the Ukraine war for the steepest fuel price.
"Finance Minister blamed the Ukraine war for the disruptions to supply chains, and said the unprecedented increase in global oil prices over a "couple of weeks" has resulted in the steepest hike on record in petrol and diesel prices. She also defended the hike in fuel prices coming after the state elections and a four-month-long hiatus in price revision, saying the unprecedented increase in global oil prices was a couple of weeks phenomenon that has led to state-run fuel retailers increasing prices," read a report published by NDTV on March 30, 2022.
Apart from this, a report published by Times Now News had also published a report on what exactly did the Finance Minister say on the rise of petrol and diesel prices.
However, we did not find any news report that mentioned the Finance Minister blaming the public for the rise in petrol and diesel prices.
Hence, it is therefore evident that the claim is False. No such statement was given by Finance Minister. Instead, she had blamed the Ukraine war for the rise in petrol and diesel prices.
