Chandigarh 6 February : The Bharatiya Janata Party Chandigarh under the leadership of its President Sh. Sanjay Tandon held a massive Protest Demonstration at the roundabout of Sector 7-8-18-19 and submitted a memorandum to the Prime Minister of India through the Administrator, Chandigarh Administration. As many as 551 party activists were arrested as they were trying to enter the prohibited area towards Punjab Raj Bhawan, where the Memorandum was to be handed over to the Administrator, Chandigarh and Governor Punjab.
Thousands of party activists gathered at the roundabout of Sector 7-8-18-19 to protest against the unprecedented sky-rocketing prices of essential commodities. Earlier to this the party activists staged protest march and demonstrations at various places in most of the villages, colonies and sectors of city at Mandal and District Level.
The party activists were carrying placards with slogans like ‘Ye Mehangai – Congress Laai’, ‘Jab Se Congress Aai Hai, Mehangai hi Mehangai Hai’, ‘Congress Ka Anokha Kehl, Garibo Ka Chhina Atta Tel’, ‘Janata Trast, Sarkar Mast’.
While addressing the party activists, Party President Sh. Sanjay Tandon said that the Central Government led by Congress Party have totally failed to control the unprecedented price hike and curb the black marketing and illegal hoarding of essential commodities. The Central Government and its Ministers instead of taking effective steps to curb the sky-rocketing prices, are making irresponsible statements. The prices of essential commodities have become out of reach for the common man causing lot of difficulty to cater to the needs of family. The worst affected have been the economically weaker sections and families of large number of workers in un-organized sectors in our society who are most adversely affected due to the increase in the food prices as their wages have not commensurated with the price rise being witnessed over such a long period.
The mismanagement of the food prices is apparent also from the fact that prices have risen despite bumper stocks of various agriculture commodities. It is an alarming situation that the increase in the prices of food articles will also eventually impact the prices of manufactured items of common consumptions. The Departments of the Government which deal with the management of the economy have failed to intervene effectively in order to address this burning issue. It appears that the Government lacks seriousness and has run out of ideas on how to deal with the situation. The Government is resorting to a “do nothing approach” in the hope that the problems will resolve on their own.
The essential coordination required between different departments of the Government appears to be lacking. This is not the time for apportioning the blame game between various ministries of the Government. This is a time for action since the inflationary trends have caused enormous misery to the common man.
The Bharatiya Janata Party cannot remain a silent spectator to all this and have decided to raise the voice of people through demonstrations and protest rallies. The party activists will also gherao the Parliament in the month of March to compel the Congress led government to take effective measures to curb the price-hike.
S/Sh. Satyal Pal Jain, former M.P., Jai Ram Joshi, Dharam Pal Gupta, Yashpal Mahajan also spoke on the occasion and said that it is disheartening that the approach of the Government has been insensitive. The recent statements of the Food and Agriculture Minister, Shri Sharad Pawar suggesting that he is not an astrologer capable of predicting as to when the food prices would come down and his continuous flip flop in predicting the fall in the retail price of sugar have not at all been reassuring to the Nation. He has indicated that in foreseeable future effective relief from the unlegislated tax called inflation may not be available to the common man. The management of the supply side in relation to the food economy has been a clear failure. The government has failed to foresee the areas of shortage. While it theoretically refers to the need to expand domestic production in those areas, the effectiveness of these measures is inconsistent with the ground realities.
Other prominent party activists who addressed the protest demonstration include Sh. Arun Sood, Convener of the Agitation and Girdhari Lal Jindal, Co-Convener, Satinder Singh, Shakti Prakash Devshali, Ramvir Bhatti, Darshan Singh Chairman Market Committee, Bhajan Singh Maru Chairman Zila Parishad, Asha Verma, Anil Dubey, Ravi Prakash Kansal, Dr. Anwar Ali, Pritam Singh, Ramesh Nikku, Heera Negi, Sachin Lohtia, Gurpreet Dhillon, Baljeet Dhillon, Santosh Mishra, Desraj Gupta, Shingara Singh, Baldev Puri among others.