Alleging that Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who also holds the Home portfolio, is directly responsible for the Ahmedabad hooch tragedy, the Opposition Congress has demanded that Modi should give up his Home portfolio. The Opposition has also demanded that Minister of State for Home Amit Shah should be sacked.

Addressing media persons here on Thursday, Leader of the Opposition Shaktisinh Gohil demanded that an all-party House committee be constituted to probe the circumstances that led to the hooch tragedy in Ahmedabad, which has already claimed the lives of about 95 people in the city.

Taking umbrage to Speaker Ashok Bhatt’s refusal to the Congress’ plea for a two-hour debate on the hooch tragedy in the House, Gohil said, “When such a tragedy had occurred in Vadodara during the Congress regime way back in 1989, it was Ashok Bhatt, then in the Opposition party, who had accused the then Chief Minister of being the main culprit of the incident. And yet, the ruling Congress had then allowed the Opposition to have a two-hour discussion on the issue in the Assembly without going into technicalities.”

Not only this, the then Congress Government had asked its Home Minister Popatlal Vyas to tender his resignation on moral grounds in the wake of the 1989 hooch tragedy in Vadodara, Gohil said. He also alleged that several notorious bootleggers across Gujarat were enjoying political patronage of the present BJP rulers in the state.

Making a startling revelation, the Opposition Congress leader alleged that “notorious bootlegger” Rasik Sodha Parmar, who is also a BJP councillor in Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, was the main person behind the hooch tragedy in Ahmedabad. Parmar was also the Mahemdabad municipality president between March 2003 and September 2005, and had been detained under PASA and was refused bail by the Gujarat High Court, he said.

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