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| Gogoi on overdrive to check price hike |
| BS Reporter / Kolkata/ Guwahati Jan 29, 2010, 00:55 IST |
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With people taking to streets to protest the spiralling prices of essential goods and commodities, especially of food items, the congress-ruled government of Assam has started feeling the pinch. With the state due to go for polls next year, the state government has apparently gone on an overdrive to check price rise.
Chief minister Tarun Gogoi has directed the officials to pull up their socks and swing into action to arrest price rise. He has directed them to strictly monitor the market to ensure that unscrupulous elements could not indulge in hoarding by creating an artificial scarcity of goods.
Gogoi held a meeting with the chief secretary and officials of the food and civil supplies department, Food Corporation of India (FCI), railways, Oil India and other departments concderned to take stock of the situation.
Recently, thousands of workers and peasants under the banner of ‘Sadau Asom Grameen Shramik Santha’ took out a rally in the city to protest the inability of the state government and administration in curbing the abnormal rise in prices of essential goods and commodities.
Gogoi said that he would hold talks with the chairman of FCI and officials of the Railway Board to ensure availability of the essential commodities in the state, government sources said.
In view of abnormal sugar, price rise, Gogoi asked the officials of FCI and railways to take required steps to ensure availability of sugar.
Gogoi has earlier sought the intervention of Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar to ensure smooth supply of food grains to the state. He has also asked the railway minister Mamata Banerjee to ensure adequate rakes for timely supply of food grains. It is learnt that shortage of rakes for transporting essentials goods to the state was adding to the price rise.
Though price rise has been a nationwide phenomenon for sometime now, the upswing in prices of essential commodities, especially of food grains and other eatables is being felt more in the North-East due to the region's over-dependence on road transport.
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