Committee on Saharanpur violence questions role of BJP

A five-member committee headed by UP minister Shivpal Yadav, which probed the communal violence in Saharanpur that left three persons dead, has blamed administrative lapses for the incident and questioned the role of BJP.
"The report has been submitted by the committee to chief minister in which a BJP MP has also been named besides laxity of administrative officers", Samajwadi Party's National General Secretary Naresh Agarwal said.
BJP has dismissed the report as an attempt by the Samajwadi Party to gain political mileage.
The report of the committee has blamed laxity of some officers and said the government should take stern action against them to give a message to the bureaucracy, Agarwal said.

"As role of a BJP MP has also come to the fore, we can say that the party (BJP) has a role in the Saharanpur incident", he said.
The committee in its report, sources said, has alleged that a local BJP MP provoked the rioters which led to attempts to torch shops.

It alleged that the administration became active only after the violence broke out.
As the holy month of Ramzan was going on, the administration should not have allowed any construction at the disputed site or members of opposite community to assemble, the report said.
Reacting to the report, BJP spokesman Vijay Bahadur Pathak said that on the one hand, the report blames administrative failure and on the other it has blamed an individual (BJP MP).

"When there is an administrative failure then how BJP is responsible for the clashes," he asked.
Pathak dismissed the report, saying the SP was indulging in a blame game to take political mileage.
"It is report of the party and not the government. What do you expect from SP which had been blaming BJP time and again to conceal its own government's failure," Pathak alleged.
The five-member inquiry committee headed by Shivpal having Shivakant Ojha (minister for technical education), Minister for Rural Development Arvind Singh Gope and SP leaders Ashu Malik and Haji Ikram Qureshi, who is also the district president of Saharanpur district as its member, had visited Saharanpur to prepare the report.

The committee was constituted by SP state president Akhilesh Yadav.
Violence erupted in Kutubsher area of Saharanpur on July 26 when members of two communities clashed for several hours over a land dispute. The violence had claimed three lives and left more than 20 people injured.