Many more demonstrations are scheduled to take place in other parts of the country ending with the July 3 rally in the Capital. Today, the Congress kept up its pressure on the government in Parliament and outside it too.

While Congress MPs stalled the Lok Sabha proceedings for a while on the urea issue, its spokespersons later said, "The government is taking recourse to scientific mumbo-jumbo to explain the urea price hike. It is established that soil fertility doesn't decrease only due to excess use of urea. In any case, that can't be a justification for increasing prices," party secretary Jairam Ramesh said.

The Congress also called for an inquiry into the petrol price fiasco. "Theinquiry must look into the serious administerial lapse which went into the overpricing of petrol. Also, in line with the recommendations of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), the money collected yesterday by petrol sales must either be refunded to the people or put into use for consumer welfare programmes," Congress spokesperson and Lok Sabha MP Ajit Jogi said.

"Who pocketed the money fleeced from hapless consumers. Who was responsible for the confusion. In our view, the confusion was deliberate. The Finance Minister claims that the money raised from the petrol price hike will go entirely to the National Highway Authority of India. The price hike will raise Rs 790 crore while the Budget allocation for the NHAI is shown as Rs 500 crore. Where is the balance Rs 290 crore," the Congress asked. Clearly, the government hasn't heard the last of it yet.

The Congress also continued its analysis of the Budget and listed four more points which it felt were negative.

Once again, Jairam Ramesh provided thedetails. "This Budget is a setback to the attempts to move away from a lobby-influenced system. We had been moving towards a simple and transparent system but now there are 12 rates of customs duty and nine rates of excise duty. Exemptions have been given in large numbers," Ramesh said.