The BJP on Sunday launched a comprehensive attack on the Congress for letting the crisis of price rise worsen and ridiculed the UPA government for its failure to ascertain the exact number of people living below the poverty line despite being led by a prominent economist.
The country-wide shutdown called by the NDA on Monday to protest the steep rise in prices of essential commodities would be a “historic event,” said BJP chief spokesman and general secretary Ravi Shankar Prasad. Mr Prasad described the Congress as a party working for the interests of middlemen and trying to escape responsibility for the common man’s woes by wrongly blaming the state governments.
“The 180 lakh tonnes of wheat stocked in FCI godowns and the 80 lakh tonnes of it that is rotting speaks volumes about the UPA government’s anti-poor attitude. There are four differing figures about the BPL people in India currently and the government does not bother. Will the UPA tell the nation how many people live below the poverty line?” asked Prasad.
Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, who recently got elected as the chairman of the International Cricket Committee, also came in for the BJP’s attack. “He (Pawar) has been saying since March that the government is ascertaining the number of BPL people. The minister is more interested in cricket these days,” said Prasad. The highest incidence of price rise, Prasad said, has been in Delhi and Mumbai respectively in recent times and held the Congress responsible for the situation.