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EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE
GANDHINAGAR, Dec 1: Yielding to pressure from the powerful groundnut oil lobby of Saurashtra, the Keshubhai Patel government on Tuesday decided to lift all curbs on the movement of groundnut and its oil out of Gujarat, leaving Food & Civil Supplies Minister Jaspal Singh high and dry.
As such there were no curbs all that the traders had to do was declare to district collectors the quantity of groundnut or its oil they were moving out. This was to be done 48 hours in advance. But the traders would have nothing to do with it.
The decision to lift the restrictions was announced by chairman of the cabinet sub-committee and Industries Minister Suresh Mehta after half-an-hour-long closed door meeting with the chief minister who is believed to have pressurised Singh to endorse the decision of the sub-committee.
Singh had been all along resisted the move, initiated from within the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), to have the curbs lifted. He had insisted that only this way could the government know how much stock of groundnut oil remained within the state.
A battle had been raging within the Patel ministry over lifting the curbs: ministers from the Saurashtra region had sided with the millers, and the others had spoken ``for consumers''.
After Tuesday's meeting, sub-committee head Mehta told reporters that decision was taken as ``oil prices were crashing in Gujarat''. Also, several MLAs, farm leaders, and chairmen of marketing yards had made representations to the committee.
Singh, who was seated next to Mehta, however, made it clear that ``the relaxation of the regulatory measure has been made only on the experimental basis and that we will not hesitate to reimpose it, if the prices of the groundnut oil start increasing''. In the same breath, he said his department would continue to strictly implement the Stock Control Order.
In a pre-emptive move, a section of the BJP ministers holding a brief for the Saurashtra oil lobby had, the previous day mobilised the party MLAs and representatives of oil millers and groundut growers from Saurashtra to represent their case to the sub-committee here on Tuesday.
At the committee meeting, Singh was left to fend for himself, as other members including Finance Minister Vajubhai Vala, Agriculture Minister Nitin Patel and Health Minister Ashok Bhatt openly favoured lifting the curbs.
Significantly, Mehta, who had been all along supporting Singh and the consumer lobby on the issue, fell in line with the thinking of his colleagues.
``We have not taken this decision under any pressure and that the Tuesday representation by the delegation of Saurashtra MLAs, millers, and farmers to the committee was a mere co-incidence,'' he told reporters.
It may be noted here when the groundnut oil prices had recently touched the highest mark of Rs 1,040 per 15 kg tin, the ruling BJP had sought to blame the previous Shankarsinh Vaghela regime for allowing a free flow of groundnut and its oil from the state.
Reacting sharply to the decision, sources in the civil supplies department said, ``Now that the curbs on the movement of groundnut and its oil have been lifted, the prices of edible oil may further increase in the days to come. The restrictions should have been removed only after creating a buffer stock of groundnut oil worth Rs 125 crore as proposed by the government''.
The sources feared that free movement of the commodity would encourage hoarding on large scale in neighbouring states, causing price rise in Gujarat.
Recently, to keep up the pressure, groundnut growers in the Saurashtra region had recently stopped sending their harvest to marketing yards. The protest had the backing of most BJP legislators in the region.
Besides, farmers and oil millers had raised the demand for forming a separate state of Saurashtra & Kutch as they felt they will not get justice from the present dispensation.
Ruling BJP MLAs from Saurashtra had even warned the government of ``serious repercussions'' if the curbs were not lifted.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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