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'Congress agitation against price hike to continue'

The Congress will continue its agitation in Parliament when the session starts on April 17 demanding withdrawal of the recent hike in the prices of kerosene and cooking gas, All-India Congress Committee or AICC general secretary Ghulam Nabi Azad said today.

"We will continue our agitation in and outside the parliament till the government rolled back the prices of kerosene and cooking gas," he said while talking to newsmen here.

The party would stage demonstrations and hold meetings across the country till April 16 and when the house reassembled, the issue would be taken up on the floor of Parliament, he said.

Terming the hike as totally unacceptable to the Congress, he said it was for the first time in the country that even the below poverty line sections were not spared from the burden.

On the party stand vis-a-vis globalisation and the reports of party's rethinking on the issue, the senior leader said, "Timely changes can be accommodated depending on the results of the programme."

When we made an assessment, we could find that the benefits of economic globalisation did not reach the poor sections of the people in the way it was expected. On the other hand, the upper middle class and the middle class got the maximum of it,'' Azad said.

"Our stand is to strike a balance between both, without changing the basic structure of the policy. The poor people should be exempted, passing the burden to those capable of shouldering it,'' he said referring to the cutting of food subsidies.

On the party stand on forming new coalitions, the senior party leader said, "There is no permanent stand in politics."

Holding that the Panchmari session did not categorically rule out Congress entry into coalitions, Azad said the party had tie-ups with other parties in some states but did not want to extend the coalition base to a greater number like 20-plus of the National Democratic Alliance or NDA.

"In Pondicherry, we have tied up with the Tamil Maanila Congress, who were in fact part of a unified Congress. This has resulted in a shift in government. In Tamil Nadu, the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham was our old ally," the AICC secretary, who is also in-charge of both the states, said.

In Bihar, the Congress wanted to keep the NDA out of power and extended support of Laloo Prasad Yadav who proved the calculations of all, including the Congress, wrong by bagging the largest number of seats, he said.

UNI

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