IMPHAL, April 11: Raking up the issue of the 2002 Gujarat riot, state chief minister Okram Ibobi Singh today said BJP prime ministerial candidate and present Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi was involved in the riot which had killed more than two thousand Muslims.
The riot cannot have taken place without the chief minister’s order. Even if he was not directly involved, the riot was instigated indirectly by his order and as such he cannot say he was not involved in the riot, what kind of a chief minister would directly order to kill people, asserted chief minister Okram Ibobi Singh.
He was speaking at an election campaign for INC candidate for the inner constituency Dr T Meinya organised by the Wangkhem Block Congress Committee. The campaign was held at the Thong Ahanbi Kiyam Siphai Community hall ground.
If people want to save Manipur and save India then the religion based political parties need to be uprooted. Sectarian political parties should be taught a lesson that there is no place for violence in a democracy, Ibobi said.
BJP has released its manifesto only after the election had started. And what is interesting is that due to the manifesto, a crack has appeared inside the party. Ram Janmabhoomi has been included in the manifesto, he added.
Ibobi continued that the BJP and the NPF are sectarian, religious and community based political parties. Such parties should be uprooted, he added.
Even before the BJP had released its manifesto at the centre, state president of the party, Th Chaoba had already released a state manifesto. The manifesto had separate issues for the hills and the plains, he said.
Will the BJP central leaders later approved of the issues that the state manifesto had promised, he asked.
In the recently held polls for the outer constituency, the Congress will win by about one lakh votes, Ibobi continued.
He further continued his tirade against the NPF saying that the party was a sectarian political party.
Reacting to the CPI’s charge that the MPs from the state have been inactive in the Parliament, Ibobi said that for a party like Congress which has many MPs, as a discipline, elders do the talking, never has any issue of the state been sidelined.
He further appealed to the people to vote for the party.
BJP president Chaoba is an addict of election. He had even made his daughter in law leave her profession of being a doctor and made her contest the Zila parishad election. Such person, if he was sure of his party winning the election, he would have never given the ticket to someone else, he continued.