Today's meeting was called for by Vajpayee following demands from his allies, who pointed out that the situation was a serious one, and needed to be tackled urgently.

Interestingly, various state Chief Ministers, not just those from the Communist-ruled states of West Bengal and Kerala, used the occasion to argue that much of the blame for the runaway rise in prices of vegetables was due to the liberalisation policies followed bythe BJP and the previous governments. Both West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu and Kerala Food Minister E Chandrsekharan said indiscriminate liberalisation was the root cause for the inflationary trend, and asked for tightening of the provisions of the Essential Commodities Act, so that action could be taken against hoarders.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Kalyan Singh and Karnataka's J H Patel also asked for more powers to inspectors, so that traders could be kept in line. Patel said the ordinance issued earlier in the year had diluted the role of inspecting agencies by stipulating that they carry out inspections only after prior permission from a first class magistrate. Kalyan Singh also added that, since October 30, his government had taken strict action against hoarders. In the first 25 days of the month, the Government had conducted 21,243 raids and goods worth Rs 10.4 crore were seized. Over 700 licences were suspended and 137 were cancelled.

After hearing the Chief Ministers, Vajpayee constituted agroup of officials under the Cabinet Secretary to make suitable recommendations on amendment of the Essential Commodities Act and on the steps needed to improve its enforcement mechanism to check hoarding and black marketeering. The report is to be submitted by December 7.

Vajpayee also announced that the Central Government would subsidise the setting up of cold storage chains across the country -- an adequate cold storage network, he argued, was the only way that the country could insulate itself against the vagaries of crop failure. He announced a programme to promote building of storage capacities upto 2,000 tonnes in every village block for which the Centre would give a 50 per cent subsidy to states and a 50 per cent loan. States could begin to repay this loan after three years.

The Prime Minister constituted a special cell wherein the Cabinet Secretary would monitor and analyse price data and trends of certain ``sensitive'' commodities. He also said the Cabinet committee on prices would berestructured to carry out monthly reviews on prices and corrective action required if these are out of line.

Terming rising prices as a national problem, Vajpayee asked political parties not to politicise the issue and said a spirit of cooperation and sharing of responsibility alone could help in evolving long-term, medium-term and immediate strategies to stabilise and reduce prices.

The satellite-based remote sensing capabilities of the department of space and computer network set up by the national informatics centre covering all the districts would be used for crop forecasting, he said.

He said major area of concern was the exploitative role of middlemen and this was evident even in the recent spurt in prices -- the difference between wholesale and retail prices of onions, potatoes, pulses and edible oils was sometimes in the 200 to 300 per cent band.