Soaring potato price shocks Munger residents

Speed Post News Network

Munger: The skyrocketing price of potato at Munger has shocked the middle, lower middle class and below poverty line (BPL) people alike. Potato, the king of vegetables, is selling Rs 60 per 2.5 kg and Rs 20 per kg in retail vegetable mandi. Stockists attribute this sudden rise in potato price to restrictions imposed on the potato mandi owners by the West Bengal government not to sale this product outside the state. Now the Munger market depends on the supply of potato from Itwa and Agra in Uttar Pradesh.

Tanveer Rayeen, a leading potato stockist of Munger vegetable mandi, said here that they have to pay excess fare to truckers for getting potato from UP while we had to pay much less to the transporters of West Bengal for  supplying potato from there. The local mandi stockists allege that the big farmers of Bihar have withheld the supply of potatoes to other districts saying that they had reserved the product for their personal use including.

Mantoo Sharma, an RJD leader, blamed the Food and consumer protection department for not regulating prices of the potato by checking the memo of price charged by the UP transporters with the price being charged by the mandi owners here. Naresh Gupta, a social activis,t said that the government  was not interested in controlling the potato price.  Gupta said the price might increase further if the government machinery remains silent over this crisis.