Cong has no moral right to criticise NDA govt on price-rise:

Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu today said Congress party has "no moral right" to criticise the NDA-government on price rise, saying the "present situation" is due to " decades of misrule and populist measure" adopted by the successive Congress governments.
"Congress has no moral right to criticise the NDA government on price rise as it is solely responsible for the present situation," Naidu, the Union Urban Development and Information and Broadcasting minister, said.
"Decades of misrule and the populist measures adopted by successive Congress-led governments without caring about the well-being of economy has resulted in the present situation," he said.

Earlier, the Congress' frontal organisations, including Indian Youth Congress, Mahila Congress and NSUI, had staged a protest in the national capital against price rise of essential items.
Backing the government's policies, the Minister said the rating agency CRISIL has stated that NDA government's fiscal policy has been quite prudent and aimed at improving the quality of spending through better targeting and scaling up infrastructure investment.
The monetary policy also focused on ushering in a low and stable inflation regime, he added.

Naidu said Consumer Price Index (CPI) in India stood at 5.77 per cent in June this year as against the all-time high inflation rate of 11.16 per cent in November 2013 when Congress-led UPA government was at the Centre.

Stressing that Consumer Price Index is very volatile and gets impacted by the uncertainty of monsoon, he said there was also lack of storage facilities, rural godowns, which should have been developed through long-term measures.
Holding Congress "responsible for inadequacy" of pulses, he said "absolute lack of long term planning and measures on meeting the increasing demand of pulses by the earlier dispensations have led to their shortage."
Listing out the measures taken by government to meet the growing demand of pulses, he said the government is importing pulses from other countries and an agreement was also signed with Mozambique during the recent visit of prime minister to import one lakh tonnes immediately and double the quantity in the next 4 years.

He said the NDA government has also hiked the MSP of pulses up to Rs 425 per quintal this year and gave a bonus of Rs 200 per quintal in 2015.
The Minister said the government is "creating necessary infrastructure" and taking "concrete measures" to contain price rise, while advising the states to take steps to prevent hoarding.