Price control
In the recent past, administration and meat sellers in Jammu and Kashmir at loggerheads from the price rise to other issues. Government has issued a rate list asking the mutton shops to sell the mutton at the rate of Rs 480 per kg. When they violated the rate listed, police cracked down on them and arrested 37 of them in Srinagar triggering closure of the shops with people left to fend for themselves.
Appealing Divisional Commissioner Kashmir to intervene, common people said that they have been left at the mercy of meat sellers by the government as they have started selling meat in their homes in the morning hours at the rate of Rs 600/- per kg.
Responsibility of the government does not stop by issuing a rate list and doing a photo op for the media by arresting a few meat sellers. People in Srinagar said that now the meat sellers are doing a brisk business at their homes selling the meat at the price of their choice.
Government has failed to intervene in the meat buying at the wholesale markets and many people have questioned the intentions of the government by doing the half intervention and allowing the meat sellers to fleece people.
Administration should have intervened at the wholesale market level in order to justify their previous orders that the meat was available at the rates prescribed by the government.
The Sheep Husbandry Department should have been roped in by the administration to bring sheep from the wholesale markets of Delhi and Punjab and sell the same to the meat sellers in Kashmir valley in order to control black marketing.
