Raking up the 2002 Gujarat riots, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Sunday made a scathing direct attack on the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate by saying the SIT clean chit to the Gujarat Chief Minister in the matter was “flawed”. In the process, Rahul even appeared to question the lowest court’s decision to accept the SIT report.
In his attack, also being seen as his bid to boost the morale of his party workers, Rahul termed the talk of clean chit as “far too immature” and “politically expedient” even as he sought to point out that specific allegations pointing to the Gujarat Chief Minister’s “responsibility” in the riots were yet to be “adequately probed”.
Asserting that Modi was answerable on moral grounds, Rahul, in an interview to PTI, said, “Beyond that there should be a legal accountability for the clear and inexcusable failure of governance under him”. He was answering a question on BJP’s contention that Modi had been given a clean chit by the Supreme Court appointed- and-monitored SIT and the courts and, therefore, he had nothing to answer for or apologise for about the post-Godhra riots.
“As you know, the SIT report had been seriously questioned by a number of credible experts. Grave flaws have been pointed out in the functioning of the SIT. The acceptance of the flawed SIT report by the lowest court has not yet been subjected to judicial scrutiny by higher courts. There are many unanswered questions. There is a lot more the country needs to know,” he said.
“The ideas that Mr Modi represents are dangerous for India,” he said and accused the BJP of “suppressing large numbers of India’s ideas”. He said he wanted “an India in which power is centralised in the hands of individuals. It is a clash between these two ideas of India.”
To a question that people appeared to be disappointed with the lacklustre performance of the UPA Government and favoured a strong leader like Modi, he said, “Yes, I believe that India needs a ‘strong’ leader but we must have a deeper understanding of what ‘strength’ means.
“Strength to me is not brute force or the ability to bulldoze your way through decision making in an autocratic manner. I do believe that an autocratic mindset that believes in dispensing with whatever is inconvenient to its notions is dangerous because such people tend to disregard what is right for what is expedient.”
He also attacked the BJP for its record in dealing with corruption. “Their (BJP’s) national president was seen taking money and was convicted. The record of the Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh Governments on corruption is well known. The money and land scams in Karnataka, absence of a functional lokayukta in Gujarat for over 10 years, the recruitment scam in Madhya Pradesh, and the allotment of land to industry in a completely non-transparent manner--the record is there for all to see,” he said.