Fuel hike: Jaspal Bhatti promotes tandoors and horses

Chandigarh, Jun 5 (UNI) In his unique style of humour and satire, popular humorist Jaspal Bhatti today promoted the use of tandoors and horses in the wake of the hike in LPG and petroleum prices.

Under the banner of his 'Nonsense Club', Jaspal Bhatti carried a tandoor (mud oven) on a horseback and his wife Savita Bhatti on a rickshaw to bake rotis of the hike-hit people at their door steps who would otherwise have to pay over 15 per cent price for the cooking gas.

Taking a dig at Petroleuom Minister Murli Deora who announced the fuel price hike yesterday, Bhatti even named his special oven as 'Murli Mobile Tandoor.' ''We have full sympathy with the government which had no other option but to increase the petrol, diesel and LPG prices. But before hiking the gas prices the Petroleum Ministry could have launched Murli Mobile Tandoors to help us make rotis in a door to door service,'' he chuckled.

Jaspal Bhatti, who performed quite a few comic roles on TV and in films besides making his unique kind of comedies both on small and big screens, also advocated use of horses instead of bikes and cars.

He demanded that special horse lanes be made for horse riders.

''The traffic police should train its staff to control horse and donkey traffic.'' He also called for setting up special parking lots for horses and suggested that government officers opting for horses as conveyance should be given special horse-conveyance allowance.

He thanked the present and the previous governments who from time to time had done their best to make fuel a rare commodity.

''In this way, petroleum and diesel have become out of reach of the common man which, in fact, would make us more environment-friendly with everybody travelling on horseback.'' As they moved from door to door providing amusement to hike-hit and harried people, the humorist and his wife were accompanied by theatre and TV artists Brijesh Ahuja, Gick Grewal, Gurtej Tej, Lalli Gill and Kiranvir.

UNI MA DB 1750