Toughen laws to curb prices, Rosaiah tells Centre

New Delhi, Feb 6: Chief Minister K Rosaiah suggested that the law be made more stringent to dissuade hoarding of essential commodities as a step to check their rising prices.Addressing a conference chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh here on Saturday he said the offences for infraction of the provisions of the order issued under the Essential Commodities Act, 1955 are presently cognizable and bailable.

He called on the Centre to toughen the laws making the offences non-cognizable and non-bailable. He said this was the case prior to 1998 and had helped check prices of essentials to a large extent. Rosaiah also cautioned that inflation threatens the process of reducing unemployment and said all the good work through flagship programmes like NREGA and reduction in unemployment by the Centre in the last few years would be undone.

"But I must tell you today that inflation threatens this progress. If we do not get inflation under control, we will not be able to reduce unemployment further, and we may even slide backward," Rosaiah warned.Numerous factors are influencing the price rise, including difficult seasonal conditions in the major production regions, population increases, rising demand and input costs, Rosaiah said and added that India was consuming more than it is producing. He termed this as unsustainable.