They plan nation-wide rallies to highlight the price increase and farmer debt
NEW DELHI: With inflation beginning to hurt the common man, the BJP and its NDA partners decided on Saturday to launch a nation-wide campaign to highlight the issue of price rise and the Centre’s failure to address farmers’ indebtedness.
The Centre has now scheduled a meeting of the Union cabinet committee on prices tomorrow. Finance minister P Chidambaram has gone on record to say inflation is a cause for concern and that the government will take measures to moderate inflation, even if it means lower growth rate. Inflation touched 6.68 for the week ended March 15, its highest level in 13 months.
Now the opposition parties and the BJP intends to portray this as a betrayal of the aam aadmi whose cause the UPA government has championed.
Briefing journalists after a meeting of chief ministers of NDA-ruled states, BJP leader Sushma Swaraj said demonstrations will be organised in every state to mobilise the people that will culminate in a massive rally in Delhi. The BJP has already announced a week-long campaign from April 7 on the issue of price rise.
Earlier, BJP leader Yashwant Sinha said, “The government has failed completely to check price rise. The reason why I am saying this is that this was something which everyone knew was coming.”
Sinha said the government had “all the time in the world to take steps to tackle it.”
JD (U) leader Sharad Yadav said the Centre had frittered away food stocks which it could have been released into the market to lower food prices. The BJP has decided raise the issue in the upcoming Assembly elections in Karnataka, MP, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. Its leaders feel that shifting focus on the issue will help them overcome the anti-incumbency factor.
