‘Politically motivated probe comes minutes before court gave Modi clean chit’

The Cabinet decision to appoint a Commission of Inquiry to probe the alleged snooping on a woman in Gujarat is in violation of the federal structure of the Constitution and is a “witch-hunt” against Chief Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP said on Thursday..

Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley said the Centre’s announcement was “mala fide and politically motivated,” coming minutes before a Gujarat court gave Mr. Modi a clean chit in a 2002 riots case, and called the Commission “phoney.”

The Congress had not learnt its lessons from the drubbing it got in the elections recently. “It has continued with its strategy of fighting Narendra Modi, not politically, but through investigative agencies and now through a Commission of Inquiry,” Mr. Jaitley said in a statement here.

As the Gujarat government had already set up a Commission to look into the issue, a parallel probe by the Centre, “ostensibly on the pretext of this issue covering more than one State, is without any basis. This action legally is suspect and liable for challenge.”

Claiming that the setting up of this Commission was an “affront to the States, Mr. Jaitley urged all Chief Ministers to “join in the protest against” the Centre’s action.

The decision “to club together cases, including the tapping of my phone and another such case reported from Himachal Pradesh about two years ago, proves they want to make it a multi-State issue.”

BJP president Rajanth Singh said the Centre’s decision was an attempt to tarnish the image of the Gujarat government. “There have been many attempts in the past to target our popular leader and prime ministerial candidate but he has always emerged stronger in every adversity,” Mr. Singh said.