Report on Muzaffarnagar riots 'politically motivated', BJP says

NEW DELHI: BJP on Thursday rejected the judicial inquiry commission's report on the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots, saying its findings are "politically motivated" and meant to "cover up" the actions of the ruling Samajwadi Party government in the state.
Though the contents of the one-man commission's report have not been made public, some media reports it had indicted both BJP and SP for the violence that left 62 people dead.
"We reject its findings. We had opposed the setting-up of commission as we knew that it was an exercise to cover up the actions of ruling SP and its senior leaders which fuelled the riots. This report is politically motivated and BJP leaders have been targeted at the behest of state government," BJP secretary Shrikant Sharma said.
Even the Supreme Court had pulled up the SP government for the August-September 2013 riots, he said, alleging that the communal violence was "sponsored" by Samajwadi Party.
If the Akhilesh Yadav government had taken prompt action after a girl was allegedly molested, the matter would not have snowballed into such a conflagration, Sharma, who also heads BJP's media department, said. "It all happened due to the (SP) government's appeasement policies," he alleged.
Retired high court judge Justice Vishnu Sahay submitted the report in sealed cover to Uttar Pradesh governor Ram Naik on Wednesday. The commission, constituted on September 9, 2013 by the state government, had been asked to submit its report in two months but was given several extensions.
Both BJP and SP have blamed each other for the riots.