Govt wants to curb price rise during festivals

With India's major festivals round the corner, the government does not want prices of essential commodities to rise too much.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is learnt to have asked Cabinet secretary K M Chandrasekhar to ensure that the supply of sugar, edible oil and pulses is not hampered during the ensuing Diwali and Navratra festivals.

The cabinet secretary's brief is to ensure that the alarming inflationary trends do not hit the common man too hard. He has thus been instructed to review the plan for price management of commodities during the festival season.

Also on his plate is the matter of reviewing the progress made on the issue of increasing the import of cement from Pakistan.

With this unenviable task at hand, the cabinet secretary has convened a high-level meeting of ten secretaries on Tuesday at 5.00 p.m. to work in tandem and formulate a plan to ease the pressure on the common man's wallet.

The secretaries of the departments of revenue, commerce, agriculture, food, policy promotion, petroleum, mines, consumer affairs, information and broadcasting, member Traffic Railways, Chief Economic Advisor would be
attending the meeting. Foreign Secretray Shiv Shankar Menon is a special invitee.

Sources said that the other matters on the agenda at this meeting are:

• How to coordinate with state governments for festival season.
• Review the status of implementation of the distribution of edible oil by state governments.
• Review the status of the distribution scheme for pulses.
• Review the progress of the development of the framework for acquisition of land abroad for the cultivation of pulses by Indian farmers.
• Review price trends and suggest which commodities the major contributors to inflation.