Kerala's bus and lorry operators continued with their indefinite strike after conciliatory talks with the government failed Thursday evening.

The Bus-Lorry operators coordination committee had declared a strike Thursday morning demanding increase in bus fares, reduction of sales tax on petroleum products from 24 percent to 12 percent, raising students' concession to 50 percent of the present bus fare and rectifying anomalies in employees' welfare fund.

Committee secretary T. Gopinath said the last time bus fares were hiked was in September 2004. Since then diesel prices have shot up by five rupees.

"The talks failed because the minister (Transport Minister N. Sakthan) was not able to assure us anything despite agreeing that our demands are genuine. All he said was he would talk to the chief minister. We are prepared to come for discussions but our demands have to be met," Gopinath said.

The strike call has come at a time when the state was returning to normalcy after a series of student protests and two shutdowns in a span of 10 days.

People in Kerala are largely dependant on private buses as the state-owned Transport Corporation operates a mere 4000 schedules per day as compared to private buses operating more than 24,000 schedules every day.

With the lorry organisations also joining the strike prices of commodities are expected to shoot up.

All petrol pumps in the state are also likely to go dry Friday with tankers failing to lift fresh stocks.