Protests against price rice across country

Amritsar/Hyderabad, Apr 18: From north to south, protests have started mounting across the country over the price rise, said to be the highest in more than three years. While the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) held a demonstration in Punjab, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), and the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), staged a protest in Andhra Pradesh.

"We demand that taxes and duties that have been increased should be reduced. The poor man should be spared of all the increased taxes and duties. This is what we want to appeal to the government," said Gurpreet Singh, an SAD protestor. In Hyderabad, women offered vegetables kept in a basket to TDP party chief N. Chandrababu Naidu.

Raising slogans against the Central Government and Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, they demanded immediate measures to ease the common man's economic woes.

India's widely watched inflation rate accelerated to 7.41 per cent last week therefore tapering off to 7.14 per cent a couple of days ago.

The inflation rate has nearly doubled since December 2007, but the Central Government said that it could bring it down to five per cent within the next two months.

ANI