The Indian Foundation of Transport Research and Training (IFTRT) has urged the Centre to rationalize the duty and tax structure on petroleum products as the present structure has resulted in large scale adulteration of diesel by kerosene.
It has also asked the government to levy excise duty on light diesel at par with that of HSD. Light diesel was being diverted and sold in the market as high speed diesel (HSD) though there were differences in technical specifications. Levies on light diesel were lower than HSD.
The parallel marketing scheme (PMS) of kerosene gave massive price benefit to kerosene against diesel. To check adulteration of diesel with kerosene, the excise duty and countervailing duty would have to be increased from 16 per cent to 32 per cent on PMS kerosene. Import of PMS kerosene has doubled to 0.5 million tonnes in one year.
S P Singh, coordinator of IFTRT, said,