The All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) will collect 50,000 signatures in Andhra Pradesh against the steep price rise of the essential commodities, as part of a nationwide campaign to collect one crore signatures and meet the President to seek the President’s intervention on halting this trend.
The AIDWA has also called for a complete ban on liquor sales and has questioned the death of two persons in Repalle on Thursday allegedly after consuming branded liquor supplied by the State government.
At a press conference here on Saturday, AIDWA State secretary D. Rama Devi said that the Public Distribution System, which was very robust in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, had shrunk in size with only rice being delivered to the cardholders and the supply of sugar, dal, kerosene, and edible oil had totally stopped or was erratic. The worst hit were women, who were asked to register for a cash subsidy scheme for Direct Benefit Transfer (cash), and the price of the standard cylinder had gone up from ₹450 in 2014 to ₹1,150 this month.
“The subsidy on LPG has been removed for many under various exclusions and there is no guarantee that it will continue even for the BPL segment in the days to come,” she observed. At a time when Tamil Nadu gave free bus rides to women, in Andhra Pradesh the fares were being increased at regular intervals. Atrocities against women were on the rise and caste intolerance was increasing by the day with the latest incident of a boy getting murdered by the mother of an upper caste girl in Rapthadu Mandal of Anantapur district, she alleged.
The AIDWA called for an agitation by the major opposition parties in Andhra Pradesh for the implementation of the total ban on liquor as all the parties had made this promise before the 2019 elections. A yatra had been planned in the State by the association in October and November seeking total prohibition in the State.
