Farmers’ unions in Punjab also slammed the Centre for not announcing a bonus of Rs 500 per quintal of wheat, as demanded by them to compensate the drop in the yield on account of shrivelled grains due to intense heat wave in March.

SBI economists conducted a study of the Russian invasion's impact on inflation. Using February as the base case, the study revealed that due to the war alone, food and beverages, fuel, light and transport contributed 52 percent of the increase in inflation, while another 7 percent came from the jump in input prices for the FMCG sector. The economists also said the RBI was set to hike rates by another 0.75 percent to get the repo rate back to 5.15 percent, which was the pre-pandemic level.

Retail inflation soared to an eight-year high of 7.79 percent in April on annual basis mainly due to stubbornly high food prices, remaining above the RBI's upper tolerance level for the fourth month in a row.

Sanjiv Bajaj, the newly-elected President of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), said various factors combined with the hope of a strong monsoon should ease the situation by the second half of the year for policymakers to decide where inflation and interest rates move.