Control price or quit: BJP tells UPA

New Delhi, Apr 17: Decrying the total failure of the UPA Government to check skyrocketing prices of various commodities, the BJP today asked the Government to either control prices or quit.

The BJP National Office bearers will meet on April 17 and 18 to chalk out a nation-wide agitation against the inflation and price rise to highlight the government's failure. The BJP Parliamentary Party which met today under the chairmanship of Leader of the Opposition L K Advani regretted that the country had not witnessed such a price rise situation in the past 60 years and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was showing his inability to check the trend.

Addressing the meeting, Mr Advani said that the issue of price rise had never so intensely agitated the minds of every section of the Indian society, particularly the poorest as was today. ''The only thing that have risen higher than prices are the UPA government's insensitivity, dishonesty, incompetence and non-performance,'' he said.

Mr Advani said it was the duty of the BJP, being the main Opposition party, to raise the issue in both Houses of Parliament with ''all the seriousness and combativeness that the issue demands.'' He said the UPA Government had failed to boost the indigenous production of pulses and edible oils, systematically abondoned the path of self-reliant food security, hurt both kisan and consumer ''with its short-sighted and arbitrary measures'' (Kisan not getting remunerative prices and common man paying more for less).

Besides, the government indulged in what he described as the greatest land-related corruption scandal in India's history, the transfer of productive farmland to 'speculative money-spinning enterprises, he said.

Reminding the UPA government of its ''Aam Aadmi'' plank on which it had come to power, Mr Advani said a government ''that is not truthful with the citizens is not fit to govern.'' Instead of confronting the problem with a proper plan and a united effort that can instill confidence among the people, the higher echelons of the government were busy passing the buck and blaming the opposition, he alleged.

UNI