Narayanan on Gujarat violence

Former president KR Narayanan has finally opened up about Vajpayee's involvement in the 2002 Gujarat pogrom. In a recent interview Narayanan said that the Gujarat riots were the result of a conspiracy between the BJP governments in the state and at the Centre. In particular the Army was not given powers to curtail the riots. He said:

I asked the Army to be deployed to suppress the violence. If asked by the state government (led by Narendra Modi) for the Army to be deployed to take control of law and order, the Centre is constitutionally bound and it is the duty of the Centre. The Army was sent, but there was no shooting against those who created the violence. Had that been done, a lot of gruesome incidents that occurred later, could have been prevented.

Narayanan also talked about the hidden agendas of the Vajpayee government:

The BJP government had several hidden agendas and education was one area where they tried to put forward their ideology. I intervened when they came up with some names for the post of vice chancellors, which created bad blood with my relations with Murali Manohar Joshi and a few others.

Recently Outlook had exposed Vajpayee's direct involvement in the Babri Masjid demolition.

[Link via Hindustan Times.]