Rip-off roster in the Northeast Prices of items soar in region PRANAB KR DAS AND TEJESH KUMAR Tezpur/Bongaigaon, July 9: Prices in Assam, and thereby the Northeast, Assam being its gateway, rise, quite literally, by the kilometre, thanks to a set of illegal “taxes” levied at will by people along the way. “Tax” has assumed a new meaning in these parts. It includes the bribe collected by tax officials at the Srirampur gate, the entry point to Assam on its border with Bengal, money “syndicates” will make, money every “revolutionary” outfit makes from trucks driving down the 274km from Srirampur to Guwahati, money taken by “student” organisations along the way and the “fee” picked up by police. Add to that the strikes that innumerable organisations enforce on NH 31C that leads to Guwahati, and the price of an egg goes from Rs 1.09 at Srirampur to Rs 5 in Guwahati. A kilo of fish that enters the state at Rs 10 to Rs 25 per kilo at Srirampur costs above Rs 200 in Guwahati. A letter written to Assam chief secretary P.P. Varma by additional chief secretary Himangshu Shekhar Das to this effect (the entry and final pri-ce) has landed the government in yet another controversy. Srirampur currently sees 400 to 500 trucks pass through its inter-state gates every day. The figure could rise to 900 trucks during the dry season. The price-rise trail of the Northeast does not end in Guwahati. By the time the egg reaches Imphal, 480 km from Guwahati, it costs Rs 6. This carries on (see chart). And all that, for products that do not need to pay VAT. “We have to pay Rs 18,000 to Rs 20,000 at Srirampur. We have to spend another Rs 20,000 for a truck between Guwahati and Tezpur (170km from Guwahati towards Upper Assam),” Biren Das, a fish trader, said. Prices of fish coming in from Andhra Pradesh and Kanpur are decided by “syndicates” active at Srirampur, Das said. The Srirampur gate has officials of the state sales tax, agriculture, forest, transport and police departments. Truck drivers offered The Telegraph additional figures to the bribe pie. “The police collect Rs 600 per truck at Srirampur gate,” they said. “We also pay up to Rs 3,000 per truck at two syndicates at Sarbhog and Bholkadoba in Barpeta district.” Sarbhog is 119km down NH 31C from Srirampur towards Guwahati, and Bholkadoba 125km. Denials meanwhile have come in fast and furious. “Traders have the habit of passing the blame onto others,” Assam’s director-general of police J.N. Choudhury told The Telegraph. “The allegations of police extorting money from truckers are not true,” he said. “All we collect from trucks bringing in eggs and fish into Assam is a cess of Rs 1,090 per truck and Rs 2,000 per fish truck,” said Trailokya Saikia, marketing inspector of the state agriculture department. “And all this is collected against receipts.” Tax officials denied the collection. “We don’t collect any tax from fish and eggs as entry tax on these items were withdrawn in June 2010,” Fuleswar Basumatary, superintendent of taxes at Srirampur, said. About 120 tonnes of fish reach Guwahati from Andhra Pradesh and are later sent to markets in the Northeast. The truckers, too, have an axe to grind, sources said. Authorised to carry a load of 12.5 tonnes, many of them carry up to 16 tonnes of material, paying money to “manage” officials at Srirampur. As the controversy seemed to boil over, organisations such as Fishfed in Assam told The Telegraph that the government did not seem to want to solve the problem. “We recently opened five new stalls in Guwahati and have been selling fish at maximum of 25 per cent profit over the wholesale price. And yet the government does not seem keen to help us expand. This allows vested interests to flourish.” The government’s assurance in April this year that fish “syndicates” in Assam had been contained seems to have made no difference with fish prices still touching Rs 140 per kilo in Guwahati lately. Syndicates have been known to browbeat small traders into withdrawing from the fish trade to create a monopoly. The government, meanwhile, is yet to explain the price rise. ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY OUR GUWAHATI, IMPHAL AND KOHIMA CORRESPONDENTS Share on email Share on print Share on facebook Share on twitter More Sharing Services
Posted on: Wed, 10 Jul 2013 05:57:01 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015