GUWAHATI, July 20 � The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Assam Pradesh on Friday accused Food and Civil Supplies Minister Nazrul Islam of manipulating the administration to hide his failure in checking artificial scarcity and price rise and announced that its senior leader Vijay Gupta will file a defamation case against the minister for the �false� FIR lodged against Gupta.
Addressing mediapersons here, vice president of the party Siddhartha Bhattacharya said that the ruling Congress has failed on every front including controlling prices of all essential commodities. It has now started targetting the Opposition to suppress all voices of protest.
�The failure of the Congress is very much palpable as it is more interested in the game of power politics and not in the welfare of the people. To hide its failure, the Congress is making false allegations against the Opposition. And in a very shameful instance of manipulating the administrative machinery for political mileage and intimidating the Opposition, a baseless FIR has been lodged against Vijay Gupta,� said Bhattacharya.
It needs to be mentioned here that the FIR against Gupta has been lodged based on a news report published in a vernacular daily wherein Gupta had made his observation on the supply scenario of potato and onion and had called for intervention by the Centre to ensure that supply of potato and onion to the State is not hampered.
�Filing a false FIR is tantamount to a criminal offence,� said Gupta alleging that 19 businesspersons in Guwahati were controlling the potato and onion market and that prices of these two commodities are fixed at their own vested interest.
Gupta challenged the Food and Civil Supplies Minister to come up with a white paper on the arrival, allocation, stock, price, sale proceeds etc., of potato and onion and said that the Congress is not bothered by the miseries of the common consumers as it is in nexus with the syndicates.
The BJP has also insisted that an inquiry by an impartial authority should be ordered into the potato and onion syndicate and rein in the handful who have monopolized the market and dictating terms.
