Committees to be formed to ensure provision of flour in AJK minister.

MUZAFFARABAD -- Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) Minister for Food Chaudhry Ali Shan Soni on Sunday dismissed 'propaganda' regarding the price of wheat flour as 'unfounded and incorrect', saying the rates being circulated on social media were not final.

'Under the directives of Prime Minister Sardar Tanveer Ilyas, the government has decided to establish committees at ward level, comprising the winner and first and second runners-up in the recently held local government (LG) polls regardless of their party affiliations, to ensure provision of subsidised wheat flour to deserving persons at cheap prices,' he said in a press release.

The minister's statement came amid reports that protests were held in many areas of the state earlier in the day against what the protesters alleged were soaring prices of wheat flour in the territory.

In the Gurez area of Neelum Valley, dozens of people, including children, assembled on a snow-clad field with placards in their hands to condemn 'dearness' in the context of wheat flour prices.

'Flour is expensive [and] death is cheap,' read a placard.

The food minister asserted that the government would provide flour to deserving and disadvantaged people in consultation with the proposed committees, which...