AHMEDABAD: With an eye on the 2014 vote, Narendra Modi has taken another step on the 'sadbhavna' road. The state government on Tuesday assured the Supreme Court it would soon come up with a scheme for paying for repair of the mosques damaged during the 2002 riots .

The Gujarat government's U-turn came after 10 years of legal battle during which it refused to own up responsibility for restoring and repairing the shrines damaged by marauding Hindu mobs across the state.

After Gujarat's additional advocate general Tushar Mehta gave this assurance, a bench of justices K S Radhakrishnan and A K Sikri ordered a stay on all processes of survey, assessment and processing of claims by religious trusts.

The state government assured the court it would draw up the scheme by the next hearing on October 1 and show it to the court and the original petitioner, the Islamic Relief Committee-Gujarat (IRCG).

"We'll wait for what the government comes up with, but this is clearly an attempt to remove the taint on the Modi administration," said ICRG chairman Shakeel Ahmed.

IRCG had moved the Gujarat high court in 2003 seeking directions to the state government to repair nearly 535 damaged religious places, mostly Muslim shrines and mosques, on the ground that the state was the custodian of life and property and had failed miserably to protect the shrines. The state government had maintained a secular state wasn't liable to finance the repair of religious places.

Last February, the high court had asked the state government to compensate for the riots-related damages and criticized its failure to protect people and property in 2002. The state government had then approached the apex court in appeal.

