The Congress on Thursday demanded that the report of the commission that probed the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots in Uttar Pradesh be made public.
“The Indian National Congress demands that the report on Muzaffarnagar should be placed in the (Uttar Pradesh) assembly and made public,” party spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said here.
“Based on reports that are coming in, the judge seems to have affirmed what the Congress has always maintained that both the BJP and the Samajwadi Party were equally responsible,” he added.
Meanwhile, BJP on Thursady rejected the judicial inquiry commission’s report on Muzaffarnagar riots, saying its findings were “politically motivated” and meant to “cover up” actions of the Samajwadi Party government in Uttar Pradesh.
“We reject its findings. We had opposed the setting up of the panel as we knew that it was an exercise to cover up actions of the SP and its leaders, who fuelled the riots. This report is politically motivated and BJP leaders have been targeted at the behest of state government,” BJP national secretary Shrikant Sharma said.
Commenting on the report, SP leader Gaurav Bhatia said, “BJP is promoting leaders who were part of the riots. It was BJP which was responsible for the riots.”
Retired Justice Vishnu Sahay submitted the report of the probe into the 2013 Muzaffarnagar communal riots to Governor Ram Naik on Wednesday.
Sahay, appointed by the Samajwadi Party government to look into the reasons behind the riots that left 63 people dead and rendered over 55,000 homeless, handed over a 775-page report divided into six sections, to Naik.
The one-man commission was set up under the Commission of Enquiry Act, 1952 on September 9, 2013, in the aftermath of the deadly riots in Muzaffarnagar in western Uttar Pradesh that had singed other districts as well.