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EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE
NEW DELHI/CALCUTTA, OCT 30: Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Bannerjee today threatened to quit the coordination committee of the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies, if Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee did not convene a meeting of the panel next week to discuss the strategies to deal with the price rise.
Speaking to reporters in Calcutta today, she said she had conveyed her decision to Defence Minister George Fernandes, who is also the committee's convenor, over telephone this morning.
Faced with the banner of revolt, the BJP-led coalition has decided to convene the meeting in ``the next three-four days.''
Fernandes, who replaced senior BJP leader Jaswant Singh as the committee's convenor after its last meeting, reacted with alacrity to Banerjee's threat. He declared in New Delhi this afternoon that he was likely to announce the date for the meeting tomorrow. He, however, said that it was being convened to take a fresh look into the demand for the imposition of President's Rule in Bihar. Mamata'sthreat gave his game away and it is likely that the skyrocketing prices of various food items will dominate the panel's meeting.
``It is high time that the spiralling prices of essential commodities are pushed back to the normal level,'' the Trinamool Congress chief said. She claimed that her party had been urging the Prime Minister to take urgent measures to combat price rise for the last several weeks but nothing tangible followed such appeals.
She also criticized the West Bengal Government for passing the buck on the Centre and for doing nothing to lessen the troubles of the common people suffering from the abnormal price rise.
She alleged that the Left Front had joined hands with hoarders to make political gains.
Fernandes, however, blamed the price-rise on the deal entered in 1991 by the then Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao and his Finance Minister Manmohan Singh. ``The policies pursued by successive government's since then have pushed the country towards imports,'' he said.
When askedwhether the BJP-led Government would reverse these policies, he pleaded helplessness. ``If you've signed international agreements and made certain commitments, you cannot expect this government to withdraw from them abruptly,'' he felt.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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