We introduce and study various categories of (equivariant) motives of (versal) flag varieties. We relate these categories with certain categories of parabolic (Demazure) modules. We show that the motivic decomposition type of a versal flag variety depends on the direct sum decomposition type of the parabolic module. To do this we use localization techniques of Kostant and Kumar in the context of generalized oriented cohomology as well as the Rost nilpotence principle for algebraic cobordism and its generic version. As an application, we obtain new proofs and examples of indecomposable Chow motives of versal flag varieties.

For certain product varieties, Murre's conjecture on Chow groups is investigated. More precisely, let k be an algebraically closed field, X be a smooth projective variety over k and C be a smooth projective irreducible curve over k with function field K. Then we prove that if X (resp. XK) satisfies Murre's conjectures (A) and (B) for a set of Chow-Künneth projectors {, 0 ≤ i ≤ 2dim X} of X (resp. for {()K} of XK) and if for any j, , then the product variety X × C also satisfies Murre's conjectures (A) and (B). As consequences, it is proved that if C is a curve and X is an elliptic modular threefold over k (an algebraically closed field of characteristic 0) or an abelian variety of dimension 3, then Murre's conjecture (B) is true for the fourfold X × C.