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We can bring prices down, claims Congress

The Congress today asserted that it would be able to bring the prices of essential commodities back to a "normal level" if it is voted to power.

Spokesman Shivraj Patil said the party had shown in the past how to bring a bad economy back on track and was confident of repeating its performance.

He pointed out that the Congress had brought down the 21 per cent inflation inherited from the non-Congress regimes of the late Eighties to a mere 2 per cent in 1996.

If the Bharatiya Janata Party could not exercise proper control over the distribution system, it should not blame the Congress, he said, referring to the BJP's criticism that the National Agricultural Marketing Federation is dominated by Congressmen.

On Congress president Sonia Gandhi's meeting with West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu, Patil said it was a courtesy call as the host of the Jawaharlal Nehru memorial lecture.

The former Lok Sabha speaker maintained that Basu, a respected senior politician, had presented a clear scenario of the current political situation in his lecture and had not held the Congress responsible for all the ills faced by the nation. "We all have to be held responsible," he said.

UNI

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