TruthofGujarat implies that violence took place in 993 villages in the 2002 riots!

They claimed: "At TruthOfGujarat, we are starting a series – “Modi Lies” where we will expose Modi’s lies in the various interviews that he has given over the past 12 years.

Lie No 1: In an interview given to TOI and also published on Modi’s original website – NarendraModi.com, this is Modi’s assertion about how many towns and villages were affected by Gujarat Riots.

Q. Even now the situation doesn’t seem to be under control. What is the reason for this?

A. There are about 18,000 villages in the state, of which disturbances were reported in no more than 50 villages. Of the 242 municipal towns in the state, incidents took place in less than 40 towns...

What Modi stated in his interview to TOI is miles away from the truth. This can be seen from the statement given by then Additional DGP RB Sreekumar representing the Gujarat State Intelligence Bureau before the Election Commission wherein he had stated the extent of affected areas due to 2002 Gujarat riots. His statement is reproduced in para 20 of the Election Commission Report¹:

20. Significantly, Additional Director General of Police, Shri R.B. Sreekumar, stated before the Commission that 151 towns and 993 villages, covering 154 out of 182 Assembly Constituencies in the State, and 284 Police Stations out of 464 Police Stations were affected by the riots."
 http://www.truthofgujarat.com/modi-lies-50-villages-affected-gujarat-riots/

Further lies by TruthofGujarat. These people conveniently forgot 2 important things. First Modi’s interview was of 29 March 2002 while the report by Sreekumar was months later, given for the December 2002 Assembly elections. Comparing events of different dates which will give different figures naturally, since stray violence continued in Gujarat until 10 May 2002, 1 month and 12 days more than after Modi gave his interview. 

Second and most importantly- Places being affected and places seeing actual riots are two different things. [In many villages, often people leave home for relief camps for mere fear of attacks, without any actual violence.]

TruthofGujarat mix the two issues, compare an interview given on 29 March with report given for elections held on 12 December 2002 and demonize.

R Sreekumar's report of August 2002 of course this does not mean that all these places saw riots. On page 153 of SIT closure report, Ashok Narayan, ACS (Home) is quoted as saying that Sreekumar arrived at this figure by including all places where food grains and other items of relief had been provided in relief camps or other places by the government. Ashok Narayan is quoted as saying that the actual places seeing violence were lesser. Naturally, there is a vast difference in the places where the foodgrain was provided and places which actually saw violence. The total number of places where foodgrain was provided by the government could have been 993 villages but there is absolutely no doubt that violence and riots were seen in less than 50 villages in the state.

 

  The figure of 993 villages seeing violence is absolutely far-fetched and cited by R Sreekumar. There are many issues with Sreekumar, who is a known anti-Narendra Modi man (and a close associate of Teesta Setalvad). He did not utter a word against Narendra Modi until he was denied promotion by the Gujarat Government on strong grounds (a criminal case against him initiated by JMFC, Bhuj and his junior K R Kaushik was made DGP before him). His claims have been deemed ‘unreliable’ and ‘motivated’ by the SIT owing to various issues. Sreekumar kept quiet until he was denied promotion in 2005. The SIT has noted several such things, including this very important factor of his silence for a long time, on page 83 of its final report and said that Sreekumar’s testimony appears to be motivated (and is not reliable).

On the 1st day of the riots, 26 places needed to be placed under curfew as reported by all major dailies the next day- e.g. The Hindu. On the 2nd day, 34 places needed to be under curfew as reported the next day by dailies (these include all of the 26 already under curfew). And on the 3rd day 40 places were under curfew. The Hindu reported on 4 March 2002: “Curfew has been lifted in most areas of the 40 towns and cities where clashes were reported (till 3 March 2002)”. This shows that only 40 towns and cities saw violence in the first 3 days.

  Since the riots after the first 3 days were mainly limited to Ahmedabad, Vadodara and some other places, even assuming that 10 more places than those in the first 3 days, saw violence after the first 3 days, the number of total places seeing violence becomes 40 + 50 = 90. We can clearly see that it is absolutely impossible for riots to have occurred in 993 villages, and that the figures of maximum 50 villages and maximum 90 places seeing riots are absolutely true. In the past (pre-2002) curfew has been placed in 300 villages at the same time time.

Sadly for TRUTHOFGUJARAT hell bent on trying to magnify the Gujarat riots as much as possible, there are reports from diehard anti-BJP people like Frontline which also say more or less the same thing. Diehard anti-Sangh Parivar magazine Frontline also reported: “The Bharatiya Janata Party made its greatest gains in the riot-affected areas — it captured 50 of the 65 riot-affected constituencies…In places untouched by riots, the BJP lost ground. In Kutch, it got only two out of the six seats, compared with the four seats that it had won in the previous election…In Saurashtra, where the water crisis is acute, the BJP slipped from its 48-seat tally in 1998 to just 37 seats this time.”

http://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl1926/stories/20030103005900400.htm

If Frontline itself claimed 65 riot-affected seats out of 182 (this includes places like Ahmedabad district and Vadodara district which had 19 and 13 Assembly seats at that time, and also 2 other cities of Rajkot and Surat), then it shows that it is absolutely impossible for riots to have occured in 993 villages and the correct number of places of violence must indeed be close to 90, since Ahmedabad and Vadodara districts themselves account for 32 Assembly seats. And Frontline also admitted that Saurashtra and Kutch were untouched by riots.

Saurashtra and Kutch account for one-third of Gujarat. Riots did not even touch these parts, either in cities or in villages even in the first three days. These places account for 58 out of Gujarat’s 182 Assembly seats. But in Saurashtra and Kutch, no riots took place even in the first three days even in cities. And villages of Saurashtra and Kutch were completely untouched by the riots.

Even outside Saurashtra and Kutch, riots stopped completely in North and South Gujarat after 3 days. Only in some parts of Central Gujarat did the riots occur after 3 days, and only in Ahmedabad, Vadodara and some parts near Godhra.

But the media lied at that time and has also lied ever since that the whole of Gujarat was burning. Around 6 December 2002, Narendra Modi was invited on Star News- NDTV’s programme ‘Hotline’. In that programme, the anchor Pankaj Pachouri asked Narendra Modi this question. He said, “Your party always gains because of the riots. But no riots took place in Saurashtra and Kutch, so you are all set to lose there. How will you respond to this?” To that question, Narendra Modi replied,

“When 2 % of Gujarat was burning, you were saying that the whole of Gujarat is burning. Now you are saying that no riots took place in Saurashtra and Kutch. So first you apologize for lying that the entire state was burning when only 2 % of the state was burning.”

TruthofGujarat’s LiesofGujarat continue!