While the speakers -- playwright Vijay Tendulkar, social activist Pushpa Bhave, Navbharat Times editor Vishwanath Sachdev, retired Bombay High Court judge S M Daud -- stressed on the need for a concerted effort on the part of the citizens to put pressure on the state government to `punish the guilty', the crowd at the meet pitched in with slogans denouncing the government.

If Sachdev was emphatic that the government could be taught a lesson for rejecting the report at the next elections, Tendulkar was pessimistic about the chances of any positive outcome. ``Things like these will happen in the future too,'' he remarked, adding that today's politicians, none of whom were interested in the welfare of the people, were responsible for such a situation. The previous Congress government did not do enough to prevent the riots, he added.

Pushpa Bhave on the other hand spoke about the contradictory statements made by Chief Minister Manohar Joshi and Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde about the report. ``Joshi says the report is biased, Munde says it is not. All this is just a conspiracy on their part,'' she said. The right reply to them will be to ``boycott'' them and not invite them to any functions, she said.

``Tomorrow someone else will say they attacked people because it was a spontaneous outburst of their emotions. Will we tolerate that too?'' she said. Criticising the speech made by Joshi in State Assembly while rejecting the report, Sachdev observed that it was the speech of a dal member and not that of a chief minister. ``The fires set by the riots might have been doused. Does that mean there shouldn't be any more action?'' he asked.