Former Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee felt that the 2002 Gujarat riots had a bearing on the BJP's defeat in 2004 Lok Sabha polls, a book by former RAW chief A S Dulat has claimed. Congress latched on to Dulat's claims on Gujarat riots as well as his remark that the then NDA government "goofed up" in the handling of Kandahar episode.
It demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party leadership should apologise. In his yet-to-be-released book "Kashmir - The Vajpayee Years", Dulat writes that he went to meet Vajpayee after putting in his papers. "The old man looked extremely relaxed. What the hell do I say now, I thought. How do I start this conversation. Finally: Sir, yeh kya hogaya? I asked".
Vajpayee, in his characteristic style, quipped that even the Congress does not know how it managed the victory, said Dulat, who was RAW chief and later government special adviser on Kashmir. "Then Vajpayee mentioned Gujarat. 'Woh hamare se galti hui' ('that was a mistake'), he said. Perhaps, he felt that was the reason he lost power, because he did not stop the 2002 riots," Dulat writes. Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat when the riots took place and was accused of not taking action against the culprits. Reminding the BJP that Vajpayee had reminded Modi to follow "raj dharma", Congress spokesperson Ajoy Kumar said, "Bharat Ratna Vajpayee" has clearly condemned the shameful incidents of 2002. "Will Narendra Modi respect the words of the Bharat Ratna and apologise to the country for 2002?" Kumar said.
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