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Modi must quit, says Congress

NEW DELHI: A day after the Tehelka expose linked Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi to the post-Godhra carnage, the Congress demanded that he step down from office.

Describing the revelations as “mind-numbing,” party spokesperson Jayanthi Natarajan said here on Friday that Mr. Modi had “lost all moral and constitutional authority to continue in office.”

According to the Congress, the revelations proved beyond doubt what the entire country has known since 2002.

“The Chief Minister has presided over and extended both tacit and overt support to mass killing and genocide, and also perpetration of the worst kind of human rights violation and murder.”

The Congress was also critical of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s response to the revelations.

“To shrug off these heinous revelations as the work of the pre-election dirty tricks department of the Congress is not just false and preposterous but betrays the callous indifference of the BJP to these shameful truths. The BJP needs to come clean on this issue and explain its position to the nation,” Ms. Natarajan said.

In a statement, Union Minister for Science and Technology Kapil Sibal said the expose vindicated the Congress stand that Mr. Modi had “systematically subverted the rule of law.”

Referring to the various cases relating to the carnage of 2002 pending in the Supreme Court, he said: “We hope that the court will decide on the long-pending requests before it expeditiously to meet the ends of justice and to uphold the majesty and supremacy of law.”

Saying that it is now for the people of the State to decide, the Congress poll managers have made it clear that the party will not use the Tehelka expose during its campaign.

The Congress plank in the elections will be the failure of the Modi Government on developmental issues.

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