By NNN-PTI
New Delhi : India’s Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi has claimed that the wounds of the 2002 communal riots have healed and Muslims were doing well in his state.
“The wounds of the citizens of my state have healed and they are living in peace reaping the fruits of development,” Modi said in reply to a question on how he would use development to bring about communal harmony in the state.
Modi, along with former Chief Ministers Digvijay Singh and Farooq Abdullah, was interacting with a gathering at the India Today Conclave here Friday evening.
However, he said he would be unable to heal the wounds of those people who have been raising these issues time and again as “this was their means to earn a livelihood”.
Abdullah intervened to say that “such matters” should not be raked up constantly as it only helps in keeping the wounds unhealed.
“Time has come for us to forget these incidents and wish that those do not recur,” he said.
Asked by Singh the reasons of not giving poll tickets to a single Muslim candidate, Modi countered by questioning the Congress party on choosing to field less number of Muslim candidates than in the previous elections.
He claimed that the BJP had several Muslim members at the tehsil and district levels who have won elections.
Modi parried a poser from Abdullah to analyse the defeat of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the 2004 Parliamentary elections.
“It will not be proper for me to go beyond my area of work — Gujarat,” Modi added.