Date:19/04/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/04/19/stories/2008041960841200.htm

National

One-day NDA action against price rise

Neena Vyas

NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party is finalising a one-day, nationwide action by the National Democratic Alliance to protest price rise. A meeting of NDA leaders will take a final decision on Monday.

Briefing reporters after a meeting of BJP leaders, chaired by president Rajnath Singh, here on Friday, spokesman Prakash Javadekar hinted that the concerted one-day action could be “like a bandh” and several other agitational programmes would follow. The party wanted full participation by NDA partners. Meanwhile, a committee has been set up to work out details of the agitation programme and to coordinate it nationwide. The members are Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Prakash Javadekar, Balbir Punj and Vijay Goel.

As the party is now preoccupied with the Karnatka Assembly polls, the one-day protest will most likely be timed for May-end, after the election.

“BPL figure will go up”

Mr. Javadekar warned that if inflation was not contained, especially the increase in the prices of food articles, the number of people below the poverty line would go up dramatically. He said the government was trying to adopt fiscal measures to curb demand but was doing nothing to increase supply to bring down prices.