Put behind Godhra riots: Parrikar, Ravi Shankar

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi Thursday got a double-barreled shot in the arm with a chief minister and a spiritual guru urging people to put behind what happened in the state in 2002.

Speaking to reporters here Thursday, Art of Living founder Ravi Shankar also insisted that it was unwise to hold on to the Gujarat riots and bring it up over and over again.

"I don't think it is wise for us to hold onto something that happened in 2002. He was a new chief minister then, so he was inexperienced," Ravi Shankar said.

Dyed-in-wool Modi supporter and Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar told the NDTV news channel that the Gujarat riots were a bad example of administrative failure.

He added that Modi, controversially appointed the Bharatiya Janata Party's chief of election management committee, was inexperienced as the man at the helm at the time.

"I will put it as a clear-cut lack of administration and administrative failure, a bad example of governance. This is my personal opinion," he said.

Parrikar, who was the first to prop Modi as a potential prime ministerial candidate at the recent BJP national executive meeting here, admitted that Godhra was a blot.

But he added: "But not defending it does not mean you put the blame on a particular person. The administration collapsed."