By IANS,
New Delhi : The BJP Thursday welcomed the Ahmedabad court decision to dismiss a plea challenging the clean chit to Narendra Modi in the 2002 riots case, and said truth has prevailed and a conspiracy to implicate the Gujarat chief minister has been exposed.
Modi, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate, himself reacted to the ruling and said “truth alone triumphs”.
“Truth by nature is self-evident. As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear – Mahatma Gandhi,” Modi said in a tweet.
BJP president Rajnath Singh, who spoke to Modi after the ruling and congratulated him, said the verdict was on the expected lines.
“It vindicates our stand that the campaign against Modiji was politically motivated,” Rajnath Singh posted on Twitter.
Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley said: “Congress party and its sponsored NGOs are unable to fight Narendra Modi politically. They used falsehood in court against him but failed.”
“Modi goes into the 2014 campaign untainted by propaganda, the verdict has proved that propaganda can never be a substitute for truth,” he said on the microblogging website.
“Truth has prevailed. The conspiracy and falsehood to implicate Narendra Modi in an offence stands exposed,” Jaitley said.
A court in Ahmedabad dismissed a petition filed by a Congress leader’s widow challenging the closure report of the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team giving a clean chit to Modi and 58 others.
The petition was filed by Zakia E. Jafri, widow of slain former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri who was among the 69 people killed in the Gulbarg Society massacre in Ahmedabad, Feb 28, 2002, following the burning of the Sabarmati Express coaches in Godhra.
Jafri said in her petition that Modi and others should be tried for their role in the riots conspiracy which had triggered violence across the state.
Jaitley said Thursday’s court ruling was a moral victory for Modi and the BJP.
“There is a fundamental difference between truth and falsehood. Truth holds together. Falsehood is full of contradictions. It falls apart. This is exactly what has happened to a conspiracy of falsehood hatched by Narendra Modi’s opponents in relation to the 2002 Gujarat riots,” Jaitley told reporters.
The BJP leader said the Gujarat riots “were a painful chapter”.
Jaitley, a Rajya Sabha MP from Gujarat, said accusations were made against the Modi-led government that it was responsible for the conspiracy behind the riots.
“The truth is otherwise. The total number of people arrested both for preventive and punitive actions are 1,00,488. This is more than the number of people arrested in any other caste or religious tension in India. More people died in police firing during disturbances than in any other riot. This negates the allegation of police connivance,” Jaitley said.
He said 4,272 cases were registered and 1,168 of these had been decided and hundreds of accused have been convicted.
Jaitley said nine major cases were referred to the SIT, and complimented it for its fairness.