Clean chit to Modi not a court order: Cong

The Bharatiya Janata Party may project it as a "big relief" to Gujarat chief minister, but Congress today took a dim view of the Supreme Court-appointed SIT giving Narendra Modi a clean chit in the post-Godhra Gulberg massacre case saying it was not a court order.

"It is not an order of the court. Many a time, courts do not accept the report of the CBI", party spokesman Rashid Alvi told reporters reacting to the relief granted to Modi in the case.

Even the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had said that the post-Godhra violence was a "blot on the country", he said.

He said that whatever has happened in 2002 (communal violence after the Godhra incident) showed that the Gujarat government and the chief minister had "failed to control the situation".

The fact that some 80 people have died in the Gulberg incident showed the failure of the Gujarat government, he said.

Asked whether the Congress would make the 2002 riots an issue in the Assembly elections in the state which are scheduled by the year end, Alvi said the violence has already been an issue as it was a "'very shameful and very unfortunate" incident. He said the party does not want to politicise this kind of issue.

BJP has termed as a "big relief" the SIT clean chit to Modi in the case and wanted that the ten year vilification against its leader should immediately stop. The BJP has also said no riots had taken place in Gujarat in the last ten years and development in the state under Modi was unprecedented. Its growth story was being discussed globally.