2016-06-30
December 16, AHMADABAD, India (AP) - Two men were killed in the western state of Gujarat as Hindu nationalists marched in parades to celebrate their landslide electoral victory, police said Monday.

A triumphant Bharatiya Janata Party held victory processions late Sunday night, with enthusiastic party workers shouting slogans after the party swept the legislative polls held last week.

The BJP took 126 seats and now controls two-thirds of the 182-seat assembly of the western state, where more than 1,000 people have died this year in the worst Hindu-Muslim rioting in a decade.

On Monday, newly elected lawmakers unanimously voted in Chief Minister Narendra Modi again as Gujarat's BJP leader.

Modi will be sworn in for a second term on Dec. 22 in a ceremony to be attended by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who heads the BJP nationally.

Modi, who was chief minister when riots broke out in Gujarat from February to March, was accused of not doing enough to protect the minority Muslims from rampaging Hindu mobs.

On Monday he promised ``justice to all the 50 million residents of Gujarat'' and to work for the economic development of the state.

Hard-line Hindu supremacists see the BJP's victory in Gujarat as a mandate to turn secular India into a Hindu state.

``India will become a Hindu state within two years from now and the Gujarat election results are just an indication,'' said Pravin Togadia, a senior leader of the right-wing Vishwa Hindu Parishad, or World Hindu Council, a close ally of the BJP.

``India is a country for the Hindus and not made for the Muslims,'' he said Sunday. ``They have Pakistan, where they can live if they want.''

A BJP worker, identified by police as Ramesh Raiyani, was stabbed to death Sunday night by a group of Muslims in the central city of Rajkot after the BJP marched through its main streets, a police official said.

``A group of BJP members, some of them on motorcycles, took out a victory procession and shouted anti-minority slogans which infuriated the Muslim residents of the area,'' said V.V. Rabari, Rajkot police commissioner. ``Ramesh was at the tail end of the procession, so he was dragged away and stabbed to death.''

Police have imposed a curfew in Rajkot and its suburbs, and were patrolling the streets to prevent the outbreak of violence, he said.

In a separate attack, Ashok Solanki, a member of the opposition Congress party, was stabbed and killed in the Gajranwadi neighborhood of Vadodara town, 110 kilometers (70 miles) east of Ahmadabad, Gujarat's commercial capital. Tension between Hindus and Muslims has intensified since the results were announced Sunday for elections held last week.

On Monday, six shops and four roadside kiosks belonging to Hindus and Muslims were set on fire by rioting mobs in the Shiapura and Nawabwada neighborhoods of Vadodara.

Six people were injured, including one from gunshot wounds sustained when police opened fire to disperse the mobs, said D D Tuteja, Vadodara police commissioner.

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