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Shahid K Abbas in New Delhi
Expressing serious reservations on Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's decision to dissolve the assembly and seek early polls, the opposition stood as one in both Houses of Parliament on Tuesday pressing for the imposition of President's rule in the state.
The opposition also asserted that polls could not be held in a 'free and fair manner in the riot-torn state under the present administration'.
Demanding that polls should take place in March 2003, when the five-year term of the assembly was supposed to end, the entire opposition demonstrated unique floor-coordination in the Lok Sabha accusing the Modi government of unleashing a 'pre-planned ethnic cleansing to obliterate a particular community'.
Initiating the discussion under rule 193, Communist Party of India -- Marxist member Basudeb Acharya claimed: "Gujarat under Modi had become a laboratory of Hindutva where the entire state administration participated in looting, murder and rape."
"How can we think of free and fair elections under Modi?" he asked.
Notwithstanding noisy protests from ruling National Democratic Alliance-Bharatiya Janata Party benches, Acharya said, "What happened in Gujarat was not merely a riot but a state-sponsored carnage, mayhem and ethnic cleansing of a particular community."
While maintaining that what happened in Godhra was 'condemnable', Acharya, however, quoted the forensic report as saying that the 'inflammable article because of which the coach was set on fire was sprayed from inside and could not have been thrown from outside'.
He wondered as to why the government was silent on the findings of the forensic report.
The BJP members complained that Acharya was deviating from the topic of discussion.
Speaker Manohar Joshi clarified that it has been agreed among the leaders that other issues besides relief and rehabilitation of riot victims could also be raised in the discussion.
Acharya argued, "If the riots were not pre-planned then what was the need of distributing 300,000 tridents and provide arms training across the state?"
He expressed concern that the BJP and the Sangh Parivar had plans up their sleeves to create a 'similar communal situation in the rest of the country'.
Warning the BJP that such tactics would not fetch them any electoral harvest, Acharya reminded the ruling NDA-BJP allies that the BJP had lost 19 of the 22 Lok Sabha and assembly bypolls since it came to power at the Centre in 1998.
Participating in the discussion, BJP member Kirit Somaiya slammed the Congress for installing Shankar Sinh Vaghela, a former BJP leader, as its Gujarat chief.
He alleged that the Congress had in a memorandum to the governor in 1997 cited a number of misdemeanours against Vaghela before withdrawing support to his ministry.
Somaiya kicked up a storm when he said that the Congress Sonia Gandhi had insulted Gujarat by describing it as 'Godse's Gujarat'
Sonia Gandhi in response said, "This charge has been made against me and my party again and again which I want to clarify. I had said that it was a matter of deep regret that some people were attempting to turn the Gujarat of Mahatma Gandhi into Gujarat of (Nathuram) Godse."
Earlier Report: Opposition demands President's rule in Gujarat
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