Hindi-speaking migrants continued to flee Gujarat on Tuesday following attacks on them in several parts of the State, even as the ruling BJP and Opposition Congress played the blame game.
Police, meanwhile, intensified patrolling in areas near industrial estates and places where migrant workers stay.
Since the rape of a 14-month-old in Sabarkantha district on September 28 and the arrest of a labourer hailing from Bihar for the crime, six districts, most of them in north Gujarat, have seen sporadic incidents of violence against Hindi-speaking people.
In a series of tweets, Chief Minister Vijay Rupani asked whether Congress president Rahul Gandhi will take action against his party’s “own members who incited violence against the migrants in Gujarat”.
The BJP has been blaming Congress MLA Alpesh Thakor and his outfit Gujarat Kshatriya-Thakor Sena for the outbreak of violence.
“Congress first incites violence against migrants. Congress president tweets to condemn this violence. Does the Congress president not have any shame?”, Mr. Rupani said in a tweet.
“If the Congress president is against the violence in Gujarat, he needs to take action against its own members who incited violence against the migrants in Gujarat. Tweeting is not the solution, taking action is! But will he act?” he further tweeted.
'Ensuring trust'
Mr. Rupani said his government was “working hard to ensure trust and confidence among all citizens that they are safe and secure in Gujarat”
“However, Congress president needs to be ashamed of tweeting this when his own party is inciting violence against migrants,” he said on the microblogging site.
On Monday, Mr. Gandhi said that targeting migrant workers in Gujarat was “completely wrong” and he was totally against it.
Taking to Twitter, he said the root cause of violence was the closure of factories and unemployment in Gujarat due to which both the system and the economy were reeling.
Mr. Thakor said on Tuesday that targeting of migrants was wrong and he was “totally against it”, while trying to refute the BJP’s allegations against his outfit.
“Most of the attackers are from Thakor community...But this allegation is an effort to suppress the popularity that I have gained with my outfit in 16 States. I am being defamed. Not a single case has been filed against either me or my people. Our truth will win,” he told reporters in Ahmedabad.
After the rape, Mr. Thakor had blamed a “non-Gujarati” for the rape in the public.
Thakor speech goes viral
A video in which he is purportedly seen making a speech against migrant workers has gone viral and is considered to be responsible for the violence against Hindi-speaking population.
“These people who have come from outside, they commit crime, they beat up common villagers and they go back to their State. Such people have jobs here in Maruti and other companies but our people do not have jobs here,” he told a gathering in Bhaucharji town of Mehsana district of north Gujarat.
“More than 60,000 people have left Gujarat, and those who are leaving now are only those who had decided earlier to go back home. There is no more compulsion and threat to them to leave the state,” he said.
In Vadodara, hundreds of police personnel carried out a flag march in industrial areas having several big and small factories where more than 25,000 migrants worked.
“Additional police force has been deployed in industrial areas for the security of Hindi-speaking migrants. No untoward incident has been reported in these areas,” Vadodara Police Commissioner Anupam Singh Gehlot said.
Earlier, over 450 people were arrested and 56 FIRs registered after sporadic incidents of violence were reported from Mehsana, Sabarkantha, Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar and other areas in north Gujarat.
