Gujarat

The new BJP President has been chargesheeted and is undergoing trial on the serious charge of murder connected with false encounters when he was the Home Minister in Gujarat. The Election Commission had prohibited him from participating in the election campaign in Uttar Pradesh during the Lok Sabha polls for making communal speeches. By this choice of President, the BJP has declared its intent to pursue the type of communal politics and agenda that was practiced in Gujarat.

The decision of the Modi Government to go ahead with raising the height of the Narmada dam to 138.7 metres goes against the spirit of the Supreme Court judgment of 2000 which had made any such step conditional on putting into place relief and rehabilitation measures for those who will be affected. The CPI(M) opposes the decision. It will be part of the struggle to force the Government to reverse this decision and ensure that proper relief and rehabilitation is ensured for all affected families.

The FIR filed against Teesta Setalvad in an Ahmedabad police station is a most vindictive act by the Modi Government designed as a form of punishment for her fight for justice on behalf of Zakia Jaffri and other victim families of the Gujarat violence in 2002. It is a measure of the contempt for minimum democratic norms by the Modi Government that it has time and again sought to suppress through threats, warnings, false FIRs and concocted stories all efforts by Teesta Setalvad and others to bring out the truth behind the role of the Chief Minister in the violence.

To use the powers of the State and further to use the anti-terrorist squad to snoop on the private life of a young woman, to follow her every movement, to snoop also on her other family members and friends, shows the utterly unethical and illegal practices and degeneration of the minimum norms of democratic governance under Modi.

The CPI(M) demands that Narender Modi should be prosecuted in the concerned cases and should forthwith step down from office. It calls for a Supreme Court supervised inquiry to uncover the full facts in the CD case so as to file criminal charges against those involved. In the meanwhile the bail of Amit Shah should be cancelled.

The information available from the documents available from the Supreme Court ordered investigation into the Gujarat carnage in February 2002, provide clinching evidence of the deliberate refusal of the Modi Government to act to prevent the mass violence against the minority community....

The SIT investigation and report has been vitiated by the lack of application of mind and by the inability to comprehend the premeditated actions of the executive in Gujarat. The SIT findings exonerating Narendra Modi have been questioned by the report submitted to the Supreme Court by the Amicus Curiae. A fresh investigation into the role and actions of Narendra Modi should be conducted, so that the truth comes out and accountability is fixed.

The arrest of Bhatt on concocted charges is a telling commentary on how the Narendra Modi government is resorting to all coercive and illegal measures to cover-up its role in the communal pogroms of 2002.