Keeping gas prices high isn't a bad thing. It helps India not fall into the trap of consumption increasing when prices are low and crying for subsidies when they go back up.
India used to have subsidies on retail gas prices. Now it doesn't since complete price deregulation and so whenever global crude price changes those was supposed to reflect on retail prices. As expected prices increase whenever crude price increases, but whenever crude prices decreases central govt is increasing taxes. Current govt has raised taxes on gas/diesel almost every two weeks and yet again last week.
I wrote a script to calculate what the prices should be, factoring in the exchange rate and crude price prevailing at the time and these are the results I got.
Month/Year [retail_price vs would_be_price(if taxes were not increased) ]
June 2014 (Rs 71.51 vs Rs 71.51) - taxes when he got into power
June 2015 (Rs 66.93 vs Rs 39.89)
Jan 11, 2016 (Rs 64 vs 36.27)
Also the tax on gas prices are really complicated.
Oil marketing companies refines and their selling price includes their markup. On that selling price there are a couple of central govt taxes. Now on that price(including the central govt taxes), there are couple of state taxes. Current cost of petrol/gasoline including markup of refineries is around Rs.25 Rest are taxes.
