On a day the Government decided to constitute a commission of enquiry to probe unauthorised surveillance in Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi, the Gujarat Chief Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party’s Prime Minsterial candidate Narendra Modi got a reprieve in Ahmedabad.
An Ahmedabad court rejected the petition plea by Zakia Jafri, wife of former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, who was killed during the 2002 Gujarat riots, against the closure report of Special Investigation Team (SIT) giving a clean chit to Modi.
The BJP slammed the Centre’s decision to institute a commission of enquiry, while welcoming the Ahmedabad court verdict which, according to the party, is a clean chit for Modi. “This verdict is on expected lines and it vindicates our stand that the campaign against Modiji is politically motivated,” party president Rajnath Singh said.
The Congress, however, is making all efforts to hook Modi in the snooping controversy. Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said the snooping on Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh when BJP was in power, the illegal tapping of telephones of Opposition leader in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley and the “stalking” of a woman architect from Bangalore in Gujarat will be probed by the commission, which is likely to be headed by a Supreme Court judge.
Modi welcomed the court verdict and said ‘truth will prevail’. Jaitley said the case was a conspiracy of falsehood hatched by Modi’s opponents in relation to the 2002 Gujarat riots. “The Congress Party and its sponsored NGOs are unable to fight Modi politically. They have attempted to use the CBI, the SIT, petitioning before courts and a media campaign of vilification against him. None of these appear to have succeeded,” Jaitley said.
On ‘snoopgate’, the party said there was no need to institute a fresh Commission of Inquiry as the State Government had already ordered a probe into the case. jigeesh.am@thehindu.co.in