Notwithstanding its repeated promises to implement the Srikrishna Commission Report on 1992-93 Mumbai riots, the Congress-NCP government in Maharashtra appears to have little intention of keeping their word.

The State government has filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court in which it ruled out reopening/appealing at least seven out of nine cases filed against Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray for his alleged inflammatory writing in his newspaper Saamna during the riots.

The SC is hearing a PIL on the non-implementation of the Srikrishna Commission’s report, to which the Maharashtra government is respondent.

The then Congress government had booked Thackeray in nine cases. However, all but one cases were withdrawn during the Sena-BJP rule from 1995 to 1999. When the Congress-NCP came back to power in 1999, it arrested Thackeray in one pending case but within hours the case was thrown out as time-barred by a local court, setting the Sena chief free.

Although the State government appealed the discharge in the Bombay High Court, the HC too upheld the decision, stating that ends of justice would not be served by reopening old wounds, which would only revive communal tension.