M A I N   N E W S

Roll back prices: Sonia
Tribune News Service and PTI

NEW DELHI, May 16 — The Congress President, Mrs Sonia Gandhi, here today led party MPs on the streets of New Delhi protesting against the hike in prices, submitted a memorandum to the Prime Minister on the issue and promised to agitate till the government reverses ‘‘anti-people policies’’.

Mrs Gandhi accompanied by party MPs and members of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) walked from the AICC headquarters to the residence of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

‘‘The government must wake up to the distress of the people. Unless the government reverses these anti-people decisions, the Congress will continue to agitate through democratic means’’, Mrs Gandhi said in the memorandum.

She said party along with the other parties in the Opposition had tried to persuade the government both inside and outside Parliament on this issue.

The party said even the Standing Committee of Parliament on food and civil supplies in its unanimous report had criticised the price rise and called for a relief.

‘‘Our attempt to move cut motions on the demands for grants for the ministries concerned in the Lok Sabha was not permitted. We had expected announcement of some relief during the final phase of the Budget process, but the government has shown complete lack of concern to the plight of crores of poor people and the farmers’’, the memorandum said.

The party said by sharply raising the prices of essential commodities consumed by the masses the government had shown ‘‘lack of sensitivity to the miseries of the poor’’.

Emerging after a 40-minute meeting with the Prime Minister, the Congress chief said that Mr Vajpayee had not given any assurance although he said the matter would be placed before the Cabinet.

Talking to correspondents, she disagreed with a suggestion that the Congress had not done enough to pressurise the government to rollback the prices and said; ‘‘We have done everything we could, but government took no notice’’. Asked as to why the Congress failed to move cut motions on the price rise, she said the party wanted to move cut motions but the Speaker had guillotined for lack of time.

Answering another question, she asserted the liberalisation policy initiated by her party in early nineties had nothing to do with the price rise.

‘‘There is no contradiction between price rise and welfare of the poorer sections,’’ she said.

Mrs Gandhi charged the Vajpayee government with abdicating its responsibility to provide a minimum quantity of food at affordable cost to a large number of ‘‘poor, food insecure’’ people in the country.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee tonight outrightly rejected the Congress demand for a roll back in the prices of foodgrains, fertilisers and petroleum products and said ‘‘needless politicisation’’ of important economic issues distract from the national objective of finding a lasting solution to poverty and unemployment. In a letter to Congress President and Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Mrs Sonia Gandhi, the Prime Minister noted that the measures taken by the government were designed towards the overall objective of new initiatives undertaken to improve rural and social infrastructure of the country.

He said the unwanted politicisation of the issue would also prevent the government from fully grasping the new opportunities which our skills and technologies offer.

The letter was in response to the memorandum submitted by the Congress under the leadership of Mrs Gandhi in the morning.