Home Minister Amit Shah recently lauded the Supreme Court's judgment dismissing the plea filed by Zakia Jafri, which challenged the clean chit given by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in connection with the 2002 Gujarat riots.
In an interview with news agency ANI, Shah spoke about the riots, its aftermath, and all that the state government did to control the situation back then.
Elaborating on what his government learned from the riots that broke out, Shah claimed that there had been no riots in the state post 2002.
(The remark can be heard around the 33-minute mark here.)
"A lot of suggestions came in. I was the home minister and Modiji was the chief minister. Gujarat police has incorporated those suggestions. There have been changes in the training models, there have been changes in information gathering, and information gradation system. In fact, after information gradation, there is an SOP on how to take action. This is the reason why there hasn't been a single riot in Gujarat after 2002."Amit Shah, Home Minister
However, Shah's claim isn't backed by the data provided by the National Crime Records Bureau, which comes under the Ministry of Home Affairs. As per the official data, there have been 29,150 incidents of rioting in Gujarat post 2002.
WHAT DOES THE DATA SAY?
On going through the data available in the annual 'Crime in India' report published by the NCRB, we found that the claim doesn't hold true.
As per this data, between 2002 and 2020 (the last available report), there have been over 29,000 incidents of rioting in the state.
It must be noted that up until 2014, all the data related to riots was collected under the header 'riot'. However, after 2014, the data is divided into several categories, such as communal, industrial, political, etc.
As per the NCRB, 57 cases of communal violence/rioting were reported in 2014, 45 in 2015, 62 in 2016, 44 in 2017, 39 in 2018, 22 in 2019, and 23 in 2020.
We also went through the data provided by the Ministry of Home Affairs in the Parliament and found a reply from February 2018.
In response to a question on riots/communal violence, then Minister of State (MOS), Hansraj Ahir, provided the state-wise data on the number of communal incidents.
According to this data, between 2015 and 2017, there were 158 incidents in Gujarat with 22 casualties.
An older reply from 2013 also provided data on communal incidents from 2010 to October 2013. As per this reply, there were 224 incidents, which killed 24 people.
While this is not the consolidated data on riots in the state, it does contradict the claim made by Shah. We have reached out to the Home Minister's office for a response and the story will be updated if and when we receive a response.
INCIDENTS OF LARGE-SCALE VIOLENCE
In April 2022 during Ram Navami, communal clashes erupted in Gujarat's Khambhat city. Similar clashes also ensued in Himmatnagar and Dwarka, with at least 15 people being arrested in the former municipality. There were reports of arson and vandalism.
There was another incident of violence, which was reported in Vadodara in 2014 ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the United States. The violence reportedly broke out after Hindu deities were superimposed over Mecca’s shrine in images that went viral.
While it is true that there hasn't been large-scale riot like 2002 in Gujarat, it is inaccurate to claim that no such incident has happened since.
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