Ahmedabad, Feb. 1: Gujarat High Court today rejected a petition seeking directions to the Nanavati Commission, probing the 2002 riots, to summon Narendra Modi and three former aides for questioning.

The commission has discretionary powers to call witnesses and it is up to the panel whether it wished to do so, a division bench of Justices Akil Kureshi and Sonia Gokani ruled.

The court upheld the state government’s contention that the act under which the panel was formed does not allow any third party to demand the questioning of any person.

The Jan Sangharsh Manch (JSM), which represents riot victims, had filed the plea after the panel rejected a similar petition filed by it to call the chief minister. The JSM’s advocate, Mukul Sinha, said after the order today that the NGO would appeal in the Supreme Court.

The order came as a relief for the chief minister as he faces elections later this year. “If the court had directed the commission to summon Modi for cross-examination, it would have been a big embarrassment for a serving chief minister to be grilled by a riots commission,” said senior state BJP leader Devang Nanavati.

He maintained that the party had no objections if Modi was summoned but it was against the deposition being ordered at the instance of a third party. “Our stand has been that the chief minister shall depose before any panel. But also that it is not the right of a third party to demand that he be summoned.”

In March 2010, the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team had questioned Modi in connection with a petition by the widow of Congress leader Ehsaan Jafri, who was among 70 people killed by rioters in Ahmedabad’s Gulbarg Society on February 28, 2002.

The government had set up the Nanavati Commission after the 2002 riots and in 2004 expanded its terms of reference to include the chief minister. The JSM had seized on this to argue that Modi should be summoned, saying there were many questions only the chief minister could answer.