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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | PM stings Pawar with onion order

PM stings Pawar with onion order

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published Published on Dec 21, 2010   modified Modified on Dec 21, 2010

The Prime Minister’s Office has given direct orders to top officials of Sharad Pawar’s department to get cracking after the food minister said it would take “two to three weeks” for onion prices to stabilise.

Sources said an annoyed Manmohan Singh has conveyed to Pawar that the time frame set by the minister is too long, especially since prices have skyrocketed within a week.

Expressing deep concern over the “extraordinary price rise of onions”, the Prime Minister’s Office wrote letters to the secretaries of the departments of consumer affairs and agriculture — both held by NCP leader Pawar.

The letter called for “all necessary steps to effectively deal with the extraordinary price rise of onions and bring the prices down to an affordable level”. It said steps should be taken expeditiously and the impact should be monitored on a day-to-day basis.

During the day, Pawar had said: “Onion prices will remain high for the next 2-3 weeks and the situation is likely to improve only after that.”

Pawar may try to justify his statement by contending that he only reflected the ground reality — wholesale prices have started easing after the export ban announced yesterday but usually it takes time for such trends to trickle down to retail markets. Pawar has been criticised in the past for making such statements on sugar.

However, the blunt statement today struck a jarring note, especially since a day earlier the Prime Minister had expressed satisfaction at the declining rate of inflation and hoped that it would stabilise around 5.5 per cent in the coming months.

The onion price stink has prompted a section of the Congress leadership to smell “mischief” but another group felt that the agriculture minister was not at fault “this time”. The operational part of the clean chit lies in the expression “this time”, which shows the mistrust between the two allies.

The sudden spurt in prices, coinciding with the Congress plenary where the Prime Minister made an unparalleled offer to depose before the Public Accounts Committee, has surprised many in the party.

Government sources said onions were not so scarce and shortage arising out of unseasonal rains alone could not have driven prices so high. “It looks mysterious,” conceded a cabinet minister.

Commerce minister Anand Sharma said enough stocks were available and hinted that hoarding could be one factor behind the jump. Significantly, it was the ministry headed by Sharma, who belongs to the Congress, that clamped the export ban yesterday.

Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee spoke of a mismatch of supply from mandi to consumer outlets. He did not mention depletion of stocks, indirectly hinting at administrative failures in maintaining the price line.

Analysts have said they expect onion output to settle around last year’s level, when production was higher than domestic demand by over 1 million tonnes.

It was not lost on the Congress that the agriculture ministry in Maharashtra, which has the largest onion wholesale market in the country, is held by the party, while civil supplies is run by an NCP minister. The civil supplies department is expected to keep track of the supply chain and initiate action if it suspects practices such as hoarding.

A Congress leader counted among the anti-Pawar lobby in the party said: “Pawar has kept agriculture and consumer affairs portfolios with himself. He has to take responsibility. Can any other minister survive with this track record?”

The topic will be debated when the Prime Minister carries out a shuffle. Pawar, who is also the president of the International Cricket Council, had earlier requested the Prime Minister to ease his burden. Onion might finally succeed where sugar did not.


The Telegraph, 22 December, 2010, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1101222/jsp/frontpage/story_13333119.jsp


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