Typical of BJP to attack Ahmed Patel before polls: Congress

The Congress on Saturday dismissed as “mischievous” and part of “vendetta politics” the Gujarat SIT’s charge that late party stalwart Ahmed Patel had been the mastermind of a plot - through recently arrested activist Teesta Setalvad and two IPS officers RB Sreekumar and Sanjiv Bhatt - to destabilise the then BJP state government by fabricating evidence in the 2002 Gujarat riots.

The opposition party also questioned the credibility of the SIT and said it was routine for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party to falsely rake up the name of Patel before every Gujarat Assembly election.

“The Indian National Congress categorically refutes the mischievous charges manufactured against the late Ahmed Patel. This is part of the Prime Minister’s systematic strategy to absolve himself of any responsibility for the communal carnage unleashed when he was chief minister of Gujarat in 2002,” said Jairam Ramesh, AICC general secretary incharge of communications. “It was his unwillingness and incapacity to control this carnage that had led the-then Prime Minister of India, Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee, to remind the chief minister of his raj dharma.”


Ramesh also questioned the righteousness of naming Patel when he was no longer around to “refute such brazen lies” and asked how “judgement” can be given by probe agencies “on ongoing judicial process”.