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HYDERABAD: Telugu Desam on Monday said the Government has given two Sankranti gifts to the people, a steep hike in APSRTC bus fares and an equally back- breaking rise in prices of essential commodities.

Addressing a press conference, TD leaders, Gali Muddukrishnama Naidu and Arvind Kumar Goud said having to cope up with such unprecedented hike, the common man was neither in a position to travel to his home town nor celebrate the festival.

Releasing a well-prepared comparative list of price rise in March 2004 and January 2010, they said the price of superfine rice has gone up from Rs. 13 a kg then to Rs. 40 now or whopping 208 per cent and common variety rice by 171 per cent.

The highest rise of over 400 percent was in the case of red gram. From Rs.20 a kg it shot up to Rs. 100 during the period. The percentage rise ranged from 150 percent to 280 percent in respect of other commodities.

It was clear that the Government has miserably failed to control the prices and favoured the traders helping them to hoard and create artificial scarcity of commodities, they alleged. They cited the example of the rice millers charging some Ministers with corruption in the export of par boiled rice to Tamil Nadu. The ‘rythu bazars’ launched by the previous TDP Government to check prices of vegetables have all but collapsed, they added.

They wondered what the two committees constituted by the Government, one comprising of Ministers and the other, of officers, for monitoring and checking price rise were doing.

“The Government should either take immediate steps to control the prices or quit,” they said. They also condemned the arrest of party MLA K. E. Prabhakar in Kurnool on Monday and termed it as vindictive.