In a tit-for-tat of letters over recent incidents of communal violence, a group of 197 retired judges, bureaucrats and armed forces officers on Saturday wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi questioning the motivations of an earlier open letter by another group calling upon him to end hate politics.

On Tuesday, a group of ex-diplomats and IAS, IPS and IRS officers, under the banner of Constitutional Conduct Group (CCG), had written to Mr. Modi asking him to end “hate politics” and expressed concern over the recent instances of communal violence in the country. In response, the group of 197 retired officials wrote: “It is a repeated effort to draw attention to themselves as citizens with a higher sense of social purpose, whereas the reality is that this is a manifest political anti-Modi government exercise which this group undertakes periodically in the belief that they can shape public opinion against the ruling dispensation. This is way for them to release their frustration that public opinion remains solidly behind Prime Minister Modi as recent State elections have shown.”

The letter accused the signatories of the CCG letter of fuelling the politics of hate by “attempting to engineer hate against the present government” and of holding double standards by not raising concern over the post-poll violence in West Bengal.

“The CCG should not give ideological cover to an anti-national outlook as well as religious and left-wing extremism, which they seem to do. These former civil servants should not be orchestrating a false narrative of “colorable use of state power,” the letter said.

Among the signatories to the latest letter were eight retired judges, former Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal and former Delhi Police Commissioner B.S. Bassi.

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