War on prices is on: YSR

Chief minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy on Sunday asserted that the state government would continue the war against soaring prices of essential commodities and take stern action against hoarders and black-marketers.

Reviewing the price situation in the state, the chief minister directed the civil supplies department to set up a special cell to strictly monitor the prices of essential commodities on a daily basis and ensure that they were available to the consumers at reasonable prices.

He asked the officials to make frequent visits to all Rythu Bazaars, super bazaars and other big kirana shops to check illegal hoarding of commodities that is resulting in abnormal increase in their prices.

According to the officials, the price monitoring cell in the commissionerate of civil supplies is gathering information on prices from 102 centres across the state on a daily basis and is advising the collectors to position sufficient stocks to bring down the prices.

"The sale of KP onions at Rs 6 per kg and Nashik onions at Rs 7 per kg had an impact on the price of local variety of onions, resulting in a fall in the prices in the open market by Rs 3 to Rs 5 per kg. Similarly, the Rice Millers Association had come forward to sell rice at special counters in all Rythu Bazaars at Re 1 less than the prevailing market rate. Besides, a considerable decrease in the prices of pulses resulted due to raids on traders. In order to regulate the open market, the vigilance department conducted 1,071 raids, booked 335 cases and confiscated over 3.7 lakh quintals of pulses worth Rs 73.48 crore," the officials said.

The officials further informed that the Andhra Pradesh State Cooperative Marketing Federation (AP Markfed) had procured 7,177 quintals of redgram and supplied to the consumers through Rythu Bazaars at Rs 30 per kg for grade-I variety and Rs 26 for grade-II.

"The chief minister directed the Markfed to procure about 10,000 metric tonnes of redgram, 1,000 metric tonnes of blackgram and 500 metric tonnes of greengram from the farmers under market intervention operations, for sale at affordable prices. So far, Markfed had procured 1,000 metric tonnes of redgram," the officials said.