Opposition unites to protest against price rise, calls Bharat Bandh
New Delhi, July 4: Expressing their ire against the government’s price rise-inducing policies, people will observe one of the biggest bandh called by the BJP on Monday in support with its allies.
The bandh will coincide with a call for bandh already given by the Left parties against the hike in petrol, diesel and other prices.
Aiming to make the strike a success, the BJP today decided to send its senior leaders out to various State capitals to lead demonstrations and protest marches.
Termed as ”opposition unity”, the bandh will target all services except healthcare and railways. The BJP has even asked school managements and parents to refrain from sending their children to school.
More than 300 trade bodies of Delhi have declared support for the bandh. Traders of different markets would carry protest marches in their respective markets and burn effigies of the Union Government.
BJP Parliamentary Party Chairman L K Advani, after a meeting of NDA leaders held at his residence, said a resounding success of the Bandh would wake the UPA government from its ”Kumbhkarna slumber” and compel it to roll back the fuel price hike and check inflation.
It has no business to cling on to power, Advani said in a statement issued by the party.
The NDA feels that prices was one issue on which there could be a grand unity among disparate Opposition parties and the last such unity was achieved during the Emergency regime in 1977 when major Opposition parties shed their entities to form Janata Party.
In this case, Left and other Opposition parties too have given a call for bandh but from a different forum.
The NDA said it was outraged by the appalling insensitivity of the UPA Government in imposing a massive burden on the people in the form of higher taxes on petroleum products and the proposed dismantling of Administered Price Mechanism for petrol.
The hefty increase in the retail prices of petrol, diesel, LPG cylinders and, most importantly, kerosene could not have come at a worse time.
The Government’s assurances of controlling prices are increasingly sounding like a cruel joke.
Knowing full well the cascading effect of fuel price hikes on all commodities, the Government, which claims it has the best economists of the country running the system, showed utter contempt for the concerns of the aam aadmi in whose name it sought votes just one year ago, the statement noted.
Arunachal BJP withholds bandh
On the other hand, the BJP Arunachal Pradesh unit in its state level extended office bearers meeting held recently withheld proposed nationwide bandh in the state on July 5 next in protest against the recent fuel price hike announced by the UPA Government. The party unit had decided to postponed the proposed bandh in the state on account of the Dree festival of the Apatanis on July 5 next and the peak admission season in schools.
No possibility of rolling back price hike:Pranab
Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee today categorically ruled out any possibility of rolling back the price hike of petroleum, diesel, kerosine and cooking gas.
”There is no question of rolling back the prices of petro-products,” he told reporters on the sidelines of a ASSOCHAM programme at Kolkata.
Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Murli Deora Sunday said the shutdown called by opposition parties against the fuel price hike was “totally unjustified” as the increase will have “minimal impact” on the common man.
He said the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was “misleading” the people.
“These parties have been instrumental in notifying the deregulation of the prices of petroleum products and reducing subsidies in November 1997 and in implementing the programme from April 2002,” he said. UNI
Source: The Arunachal Times
