Let judiciary decide if Modi is guilty or not, says NCP's Supriya Sule

Mumbai: One of the young leaders in the fray, Nationalist Congress Party MP Supriya Sule, who is seeking re-election for the 16th Lok Sabha, insists that Narendra Modi should no more be cornered for the 2002 Gujarat riots when the judiciary has given him a clean chit.

In an exclusive interview to CNN-IBN, Sule said that judiciary was the final arbiter and insisted that the young generation wants to look forward and "does not want anything of the past".

She, however, added that Modi being the Chief Minister cannot escape the moral responsibility for the riots. "Can't say it is irrelevant. It is a part of his report card," said the daughter of NCP chief Sharad Pawar.

"It takes a lot of guts to own up and I will have a lot of respect for someone who would own up," she added.

Even as her father and NCP chief Sharad Pawar has voiced his difference with working under a UPA government led by Rahul Gandhi, Sule's opinions differs. She says if the junior Gandhi was the choice of Congress, she being an ally of the party has no problem working with Rahul.

"I work with people not under anyone. It is not a feudal system. He (Rahul) is my ally, whoever the Congress chooses is their internal decision. He is definitely leading his party from the front," she told CNN-IBN.

When asked about her father's reluctance to work with the Gandhi scion even as she was comfortable in the position, Sule said that one cannot compare her with the NCP chief. "You cannot compare me to Mr Pawar. Mr Pawar has put in 50 years of hard focused work. There is a generation gap of almost 40 years," said the MP who is contesting the upcoming Lok Sabha polls from her pocketborough of Baramati.

"If his (Rahul's) father were alive today, his father and my father would be colleagues. So it is very difficult even for me to expect that from the senior leadership of my own party. There are times when I have to ask my father or brother to intervene when having to talk to senior leaders in the party. There is a certain protocol. It is about age and experience," she noted.