Cong blames BJP for method in madness

Anyone who has been following the violence in Gujarat would have noticed a distinct shift in pattern. The violence has spread to new areas w...

Anyone who has been following the violence in Gujarat would have noticed a distinct shift in pattern. The violence has spread to new areas which remained unaffected for over a month. These include parts of Anand district, Kheda, Mehsana and Vadodara.

The interesting point is all these areas, which are either panchayats or nagarpalikas, are either ruled by Congress or have an administrator. Senior Congress leaders allege that this is a deliberate attempt to malign Congress leaders and disrupt panchayats and nagarpalikas where they are in power.

Take Kheda, for instance. For last 31 days, areas such as Narsanda, Undela, Kanjri, Kapadvanj and Chaklasi remained calm. But on last Saturday, violence flared up in all these areas. Chaklasi, in fact, has a Congress MLA Shankarbhai Vaghela.

Said Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee chief Amarsinh Chaudhury: 8216;8216;If this isn8217;t being done deliberately tell me why these areas were peaceful for 31 days and suddenly violence flares up. We have made every attempt to keep areas under our control peaceful and succeeded till now. But in the face of blatant instigation, areas where there was no history of communal violence are flaring up.8217;8217;

Police also point out that 95 per cent of the new areas where violence flared-up a month after Godhra are Congress-ruled.

A senior Congress leader charged that the state government was trying to destabilise their governments in power in the panchayats and nagarpalikas. 8216;8216;They are trying to consolidate the vote banks in those areas which they lost during civic polls and out to saffronise everything,8217;8217; Congress leader Naresh Raval said.

The state government is also apparently trying to influence vote banks in rural areas where administrators are holding charge. That explains the violence in Boriyavi and Adar nagarpalikas in Anand District which have an administrator. Kheda SP, Manoj Agarwal, said that he was surprised there were communal flare-ups after an incident as minor as one person slapping another.