A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged Indians to save fuel, avoid buying gold and work from home, the government held a formal ministerial meeting on the West Asia crisis and stated that there is no shortage of any petroleum product in the country.
However, she indicated that public sector oil marketing companies absorb losses of approx $1,000 crore per day to prevent pump prices from rising even as crude oil prices rise.
What the government said, the Prime Minister repeats the call
Defense Minister Rajnath Singh chaired the fifth meeting of the Informal Group of Ministers on West Asia on Monday, which was attended by the ministers of petroleum, railways, civil aviation, fertilisers, ports and science. The main message of the meeting, according to a government press release, was that India has 60 days’ worth of crude oil and natural gas, and 45 days’ worth of liquefied petroleum gas.
“There is no reason for concern, and there is no reason for any citizen to rush to retail outlets,” a Press Information Bureau (PIB) statement said.
Foreign exchange reserves stand at $703 billion, which is also comfortable.
“But there is a huge cost to the nation as global crude oil prices continue at very high levels,” the statement said.
“Conserving fuel can ease this burden. Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi’s (Hyderabad) appeal to the people… emphasized the wisdom in using petroleum products and reducing wasteful consumption, so that the financial burden on the nation is reduced now and in the future,” the statement said.
Prime Minister Modi reiterated his appeal in Gujarat later in the day: “Even in previous decades, whenever the country went through a war or any other major crisis, every citizen fulfilled his responsibility in the same way in response to the government’s call.”
He further stressed, “India is spending thousands of crores of foreign exchange to import various products from abroad. At the same time, prices of imported goods are rising and global supply chains have been severely disrupted. Just as every drop fills a pot, every small and big effort counts. We must reduce the use of products that come from abroad and avoid unnecessary dependence on imported goods in our daily life and also avoid such personal activities that involve spending foreign exchange.”
Losses of oil companies during the war
The group noted that India is among the few countries where oil prices have maintained stability during the period of global volatility, “even after more than 70 days since the start of the conflict.”
“In many countries, prices rose by 30 to 70 percent. However, Indian oil marketing companies absorbed losses approaching 70 percent,” the report noted. $1,000 crore per day, with recovery rates falling to approx $2 lakh crore per [the first quarter of the current fiscal year]So that the burden of global astronomical prices is not transferred to Indian citizens.
The opposition has long said that the government was not working to reduce taxes, and that it would at some point pass the burden of crude oil prices on to consumers.
“Atmosphere is created” for higher prices: Vs
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday described Prime Minister Modi’s seven austerity appeals as “evidence of failure”.
“In 12 years, he has brought the country to a stage where the people must be told what to buy, what not to buy, where to go, and where not to go,” he wrote, describing Modi as a “compromising prime minister” who can no longer run the country.
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh read the Prime Minister’s speech in Hyderabad as preparation for something tougher. He said: “There may be a phase of strict measures to reduce costs, including raising fuel prices, on the horizon, and the atmosphere is being created to make them more acceptable.”
Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav wondered why the crisis emerged only after the recent elections in four states and the UT.
“During the elections, BJP leaders took thousands of charter flights. Were those planes flying on water?” he asked.
The RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav drew parallels with Modi’s 2024 Lok Sabha campaign, in which the prime minister accused the Congress-led opposition of planning to “snatch the mangalsutra” from married Hindu women — widely read as a defense of gold ownership — and is now asking those same citizens to stop buying the metal for a year.
Markets have already been spooked by the austerity call. The BSE Sensex on Monday fell by more than 1,300 points, its biggest decline since March. Titan, India’s largest jewelery company, was the single biggest loser in the Sensex, down nearly 7%. The rupee closed at an all-time low of 95.31 against the US dollar.
The Prime Minister faces criticism
Prime Minister Modi was also criticized for his promotional tours even after calling for fuel saving. His foreign visits – he is scheduled to leave on a seven-day foreign visit to the United Arab Emirates, Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway and Italy on Friday – have also become the subject of some commentary on X and elsewhere.
BJP’s IT cell head Amit Malviya responded to the criticism, arguing that Prime Minister Modi did not demand sacrifice but called for “conscious choices in the national interest”.
He compared him to India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, the Congress leader who is often mocked by the Bharatiya Janata Party for his similar appeals during the Korean War.
The war between the US and Iran is currently stuck in an uneasy ceasefire, but the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil waterway, remains in place by both Iran and the US.
