Gopalgarh Haunting Gehlot, Protestors Liken Him With Modi

The Gopalgarh police firing episode has returned to haunt chief minister Ashok Gehlot. Four days prior to his finalised visit to Ajmer, posters comparing Gehlot with Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi appeared in the mosques of Dargah Sharif city on July 28. One such poster found in a mosque in the locality behind the district Collectorate drew similarity between Rajasthan’s Gopalgarh and Gujarat’s Godhra where minority people were killed in one of the country’s worst riots in 2002. “What is the difference between Godhra and Gopalgarh? What is the difference between Modi and Gehlot?” the poster read. It was undersigned by an unknown organisation, “Jagruk Musalman Samiti, Ajmer.” The poster urged the minority community people to boycott the chief minister’s roza iftar party on July 31. Similar posters targeting chief minister Gehlot for the Gopalgarh incident had come up in the mosques of western Uttar Pradesh prior to the assembly elections in that state. The resentment within the minority community over the police firing incident appears to have continued since September 2011.