Food mismanagement: UPA's biggest betrayal

New Delhi, Mar 31: Taking a potshot at the UPA Government before its Cabinet Committee of Prices meets later this evening to discuss ways to arrest the inflationary prices of essential items, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday accused it of mismanaging the national food buffer stock, and suggested that Parliament must be taken into confidence to resolve an impending crisis.

Talking to reporters here, party spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad claimed the nation under UPA rule "is increasingly entering into an era of food insecurity," and added that the common man (Aam Adami) is the biggest victim of this gross mismanagement of the food economy. "The nation would like to know as to why we have so much of mismanagement of the food economy when a well-known economist Manmohan is at the helm as the Prime Minister for the last about four years?" asked Prasad.

He further emphasized the gravity of the food crisis by saying that during the NDA regime, particularly between the years 2000-2003, India had the highest record of buffer stock of food grains.

The situation was so comfortable that food grains worth 7000 crores were even exported in 2003, he added.

Now, the situation is so bad that the prices of essential food articles have shown an alarming rise even after the presentation of the so-called pro-people budget in March, he said.

"The government has never been serious in the management of food economy. The record of the UPA in the last four years constitutes the biggest betrayal of the Aam Aadmi," Prasad said.

He concluded by saying that Planning Commission figures have revealed that today the country's per capita availability of food grains has fallen to the levels of 1970s.

The BJP said that the government must come out with a policy statement that should include mention of long and short-term measures to contain this crisis.

ANI