Centre failed miserably to check prices: AIFB

New Delhi, Feb 10: The All India Forward Bloc, an ally of the ruling coalition, today held the Congress-led UPA government responsible for failure to check skyrocketing prices of essential commodities and said the common people were suffering from the price rise.

In a statement, AIFB General Secretary Debabrata Biswas, MP, said the goverment remained silent when the inflation rates increased and hovered around six per cent for the past four weeks from last year's four per cent level.

He said the inflation rate and price rise was due to economic mismanagement and failure to intervene effectively in the market.

The government had ignored suggestions made by the Left parties and did not display the political will to ban forward trading, which, in the range of Rs 1.29 lakh crore in 2003-04, had touched Rs 21.43 lakh crore in 2005-06, he said.

Mr Biswas noted it was a matter of regret that the UPA government had totally ignored the public distribution system and said agencies like the Food Corporation of India and other Civil Supplies departments had also failed to effectively intervene to control the price rise. Instead, the common man was made to fend for himself from hoarders and black marketers.

He announced that the AIFB would launch a nationwide people's movement against the unprecedented price rise and appealed to the common man to put pressure on the government to act against the escalating prices.

UNI