Even as the government said on Monday that it may extend the window for the import of white sugar up to December 2010 to contain spiralling prices, agriculture minister Sharad Pawar sparked off protests over his remarks that he was no astrologer to predict when prices would cool down.
A day before the Cabinet Committee of Costs and Prices (CCP) is to meet, Pawar said, “I am not an astrologer to predict when the prices would come down.”
“Our recommendation to the Cabinet Committee on Prices will be to extend the import window up to December 2010 on par with raw sugar,” Pawar said, saying this was one of the measures that the government was considering to cool down prices.
Pawar’s remarks, however, came under attack from the BJP and the Congress. BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar, who had earlier asked for Pawar’s resignation over the unprecedented rise in prices said, “If Pawar is not an astrologer, how did he predict that the prices would go up?”
“The government is clueless how to deal with the matter and is therefore coming up with such comments,” he said. Earlier, Congress general secretary Janardan Dwivedi also said that “its not enough that the government and its departments draw attention to the problem, they should find a way to deal with it.”
The ministry is also considering relaxing import conditions to allow mills in Uttar Pradesh to refine imported raw sugar. The state had, in November, banned the transportation and processing
of sugar.
