The Congress party on Friday intensified its attack on the Akhilesh Yadav government on the day the CBI closed a six-year-old disproportionate assets case against the Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Drawing a parallel between communal violence in Western UP and 2002 post-Godhra riots in Gujarat, the Congress said chief minister Akhilesh Yadav has “no right to continue” as the state government “failed miserably” to control the riots in Muzaffarnagar.
But the party could not explain whether Muzaffarnagar riots were “state sponsored” like the 2002 Gujarat riots that took place in the first term of Mr Narendra Modi as the Gujarat chief minister.
Terming Muzaffarnagar riots as “one of most deplorable acts of modern India during recent times”, party spokesperson P C Chacko said “it is almost like revisiting Gujarat riots 2002 again”.
Alleging the state government “failed miserably” to take preventive action, he said the incidents in Muzaffarnagar and adjoining areas show “total failure” of the state government and hence “the state government has no right to continue in the light of these incidents”.
He made it clear that he was not advocating the imposition of President’s rule in the state and that “these two are entirely different things...Sacking of a government is an entirely different matter.”
Asked whether the visit of PM Manmohan Singh, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and the party vice-president Rahul Gandhi to Muzaffarnagar was only symbolic, Mr Chacko shot back “going there and suspending the government? We did not mean that.”
Replying to a volley of questions as to what prompted him to compare the Muzaffarnagar riots with those in Gujarat, he said “because both are riots. Whenever any communal riots happen, there is a carnage. Is it not?”
Mr Chacko said that besides those who died, there are 50 thousand people in relief camps and their condition is “not at all satisfactory” and asked the UP government to immediately create an atmosphere in which people can go back to their native villages.