By IANS,
New Delhi : The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has blamed Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar for rising prices, Monday charged him with making a mess of the country’s food economy.
However, Pawar’s own Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) said that it was unfair to blame the minister alone for the price rise as all decisions were taken by the cabinet collectively.
“He (Pawar) is speaking the language of middlemen,” BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad said.
Demanding an inquiry into the food procurement business, he said the government had claimed bumper production of wheat and rice over the past two years but the prices of these commodities have shot up.
“Why have the prices of rice and wheat gone up?” Prasad asked, and alleged that 11 lakh tonnes of buffer stock of sugar were released ahead of Maharashtra assembly polls last year to keep its price low.
“They exhausted the buffer stock,” he alleged.
Asked about Pawar’s remarks that the cabinet, including the prime minister, together decided price policy, Prasad said Manmohan Singh was also responsible for the “mess” as he had made a promise to bring down prices in 100 days.
“The nation is entitled to know how under an economist prime minister, the food economy of India is so much mismanaged,” he said, adding either the government was “befooling people about claims of record food production or there is mismanagement”.
The BJP leader added that blaming states for rise in prices was “uncalled for” as all policy decisions were taken by the central government.
However, NCP general secretary Tariq Anwar rubbished criticism of Pawar, including by the Congress, and said most people understand that the agriculture minister cannot be blamed.
“No sensible person can talk like this,” he said.
On Pawar’s statement about the likely increase in milk prices due to gap in production and demand, Anwar said the minister had to tell the ground reality.
He said price rise was a temporary phase. “It is not specific to India but a global phenomenon.”
Anwar added that drought, floods and delay in monsoon last year had also contributed to rise in prices.
“A minister does not have control over national calamities,” he said.
Anwar termed as “meaningless talk” that Pawar’s portfolios of agriculture, food, consumer affairs and public distribution could be bifurcated.
“These are just media reports,” he said.