Lucknow: Followed by Haryana, Uttar Pradesh’s Yogi Adityanath government may impose on fuel. The UP government is planning to hike VAT on petrol and diesel and increase bus fare to fill a gap in current revenue losses. So far, the government has been able to achieve only 1.2% of its set annual revenue target.

State finance and parliamentary affairs minister Suresh Kumar Khanna hinted that in the next couple of days, the government could be increasing taxes and cess in the different heads after suffering huge losses due to corona pandemic in the state. Amidst the nationwide corona lockdown, UP government tackling financial crunch and state government took several measures to curb the financial expenditure. Recently, the government has already frozen dearness allowance and six other benefits of the state government employees and pensioners in their salaries from the current month to May next year. Along with this, the government also cut the salary of 30% of the MLAs for one year.

However, the UP government Is putting in extra effort to sustain the state economy, which has been coming down due to lockdown was announced by PM Narendra Modi from March last year. All the industrial, financial, agricultural, and trade activities have stopped in the state, and revenue recovery has not reached close to its annual targets. According to finance department data so far, the government has been able to achieve the only targets of 29.4% GST, 16.9 GST, .9% stamp, and 15% in mining in the April month.