Speaking to IANS, Hooda pointed out that the Mewat region in general, and Nuh in particular, did not see any violence even at during Partition.
At least six people, including two home guards and a cleric, lost their lives in the violence, which, according to Hooda, signalled a complete administrative failure and said the BJP-JJP government owed an explanation to the people.
The violence that was triggered in Nuh also spread to neighbouring Faridabad, Palwal, Hodal, Gurugram and Sohna districts.
“What has happened in Haryana is most unfortunate and most painful for all Haryanvis to see, for the state has no history of communal flareups,” said the MP who is also the son of the state’s two-term chief minister, Bhupinder Singh Hooda. “We don’t have a history of communal tensions,” he added.
Explaining how it was “a complete failure” of the state government, he said: “A procession was supposed to take place and earlier too such processions have been allowed. What should have been done was to provide adequate police cover along the route so that confrontations between the two communities could have been averted at any cost.”
He added: “The Chief Minister (Manohar Lal Khattar) and the state Home Minister (Anil Vij) have been claiming it was a pre planned conspiracy. But if this was pre-planned, then what did they do about it?
Firing salvos at the BJP-JJP government, Hooda asked: “Did you have no information about the possibility of vioence? If you had the information, what preventive measures did you take.
“And if you had no knowledge, then what was your CID doing? If the CID had given information, then what was the police doing? These questions can only be answered after a free and fair probe. The government cannot hide from the truth.”
He said that now it has come out in the public domain and in the media that the state government had intel about the possibility of a communal flareup 10 days before the actual violence, but the local police were not given any instructions on how to deal with the situation.
“Somewhere down the line the intel was lost. The government has let down everyone,” Hooda said.
When asked if he suspected a bigger conspiracy, the Congress MP said even the BJP leader and Gurugram Lok Sabha MP, Rao Inderjit Singh, has gone on record to question how weapons, swords and sticks were allowed to be carried in the procession.
“Singh has also said that he suspects the action was pre-planned from both sides and the videos circulating in the public domain are proof of this,” Hooda pointed out. “Even then CID did not act and the state government should have deployed more policemen.”
Hooda also highlighted Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Chautala’s point that “the organisers did not provide any information on the scale of the procession and their route”.
“We not only want the rioters to be exposed, but also the government to be held accountable,” Hooda said.
Taking a larger view of incidents of violence rocking the country, Hoods declared: “Look at the faultlines appearing across the country every day. They need to ask themselves what the government has done for the country. And the government needs to introspect.”
(Anand Singh can be contacted at anand.s@ians.in)
–IANS
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