After Praful Patel now Sharad Pawar backs Modi

Mumbai, 2 February 2014

Days after senior NCP leader and Union Minister Praful Patel said people must respect judiciary’s clean chit to BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi in 2002 Gujarat violence, party chief Sharad Pawar has on Sunday openly backed Modi saying if courts have given their verdict, it should be respected.

TV reports quoted NCP chief Pawar as saying, “If courts have given their verdict, it should be respected.”

Earlier on Wednesday, Praful Patel had said that the matter surrounding Narendra Modi must be laid to rest after SIT’s clean chit to him in 2002 Gujarat violence.

Patel said the judicial pronouncement on the Gujarat Chief Minister in the 2002 post-Godhra riots should be accepted and should not be questioned further.

“We are in an era when we believe that the judicial system is the final recourse to getting justice on any issue or to bring finality to any controversy and if the judicial system has given any pronouncement, we ought to respect it. We will not question it further,” Patel told reporters.

He was replying to questions on Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s attack on the Gujarat Chief Minister in a television interview.

Apparently hitting out at Rahul Gandhi, the NCP leader said, “It was for each one to give his or her version in an interview but politics was based on perception of not just the politicians but the public too.”

“But the fact remains that if the judicial system has given certain finality to any controversy, then we should let it rest there,” the NCP leader said.