BHUBANESWAR: Assembly Speaker Surya Narayan Patro on Wednesday directed the State Government to inform the House about raids conducted on jewellery shops in Bhubaneswar and Berhampur cities.
The Speaker gave the directive to Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare Minister Ranendra Pratap Swain when the latter said he had no reports on raids conducted in the two cities. While responding to an original question of BJP MLA Ganesh Ram Singh Khuntia on raids conducted on trader and business establishments dealing with consumer items, the Minister said raids were conducted on 42 jewellery shops in the past two years for cheating consumers in weight and measures across the State. "The department raided 31 jewellery shops in 2017-18 and 11 in 2018-19," the Minister said.
As many as seven jewellery shops in Cuttack, six in Balasore and four in Khurda districts were found to have cheated consumers in weight and measure of ornaments, the Minister said. However, Congress MLA Narasingh Mishra intervened saying the data provided by the Minister was about small jewellery shops. He sought to know how many big jewellery shops were raided.
The Speaker specifically wanted to know from the Minister about the number of raids conducted in Berhampur and Bhubaneswar. As the Minister said he will provide the data later, the Speaker asked Swain to issue showcause notice to market inspectors posted in the two cities and inform media about the raids conducted and fines collected from jewellery shops cheating consumers.
Admitting that prices of essential commodities, including onion and potato, have gone up in the State significantly, the Minister said rising prices is a national issue.The State Government has created a corpus of `100 crore in coordination with the Centre to control the rise of prices of some vegetables and pulses. He said the soaring prices of edible oil, pulses, potato and onion in the State, he said it is mostly due to the fact that these items are procured from other states.
The Government is aware of the rise of prices of essential commodities and keeping a close watch on wholesale and retail markets to control the prices of these commodities and prevent hoarding, he added. The Minister said the Government has gone for market intervention by selling onion through fair price shops across the states.