Buddhadeb slams central government for costly onions

KOLKATA - Blaming the Congress-led central government for the spiralling onion prices, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee Wednesday accused it of allowing traders to make huge profits by first exporting the bulb and then importing it.

Speaking at a Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) rally in Bongaon of North 24-Parganas district, Bhattacharjee said: “The Congress has always been a party of the rich.”

“They allowed businessmen to make huge profits by letting them export onions and when the prices in the country rose, they permitted the traders to import them back, making big profits,” he said.

Bhattacharjee termed the price rise as one of the biggest problems the country was facing and charged the Congress-led central government with deliberately letting the high rates to continue.

“They keep on holding meetings but come out with nothing. I have been clamouring since long for subsidy so that commodities of daily use can be provided at cheaper rates, but the government said it had no money. Later on, the government allowed unscrupulous people to loot Rs.1.76 lakh crore from its coffers,” said Bhattacharjee, in an obvious reference to the scandal involving second generation airwave allocation to telecom companies.

Bhattacharjee slammed the central government for being insensitive to the Supreme Court’s directive of providing food grain that have been rotting in government warehouses, to the poor at cheaper rates.