ALLAHABAD/LUCKNOW, Feb 11:
A senior UP Minister resigned today owning moral responsibility for Sunday’s stampede which has claimed 36 lives even as a blame game erupted between the Centre and the UP Government on who was responsbible for the tragedy.
Two probes, one by the UP Government and another by the Railways, to go into what triggered the stampede as also organisational lapses, have been ordered.
CMO Allahabad Dr Prabhakar said 14 more people died during treatment, taking the death toll to 36. The victims include 26 women, 9 men and a child. Bodies of 20 of the deceased have been identified.
Taking moral responsibility for the stampede, UP Cabinet Minister Mohammad Azam Khan resigned as the in-charge of Kumbh Mela.
“Though the incident took place outside the Kumbh Mela premises, I take moral responsibility and resign as the in-charge of the Kumbh. I am sending my resignation to Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav”, Khan told reporters in Lucknow.
The State Government blamed the Railways for not making adequate arrangements to deal with the rush. The ministry feels if the State Government had dealt with the situation in a better way, the incident could have been averted.
The Chief Minister said, “We all know who is at fault for this incident.”
In Delhi, Railway Minister P K Bansal said,”There are a total of 12,000 trains on Indian Railway’s 65,000 km long route system which carries 2.3 crore passengers in a day. So all the trains cannot reach at one spot in a day as there are limitations on the part of Railways to carry crores of passengers in a given day.”
He was asked whether Railways was prepared to handle the Kumbh rush of 3 crore passengers in a day.
Bansal announced Rs one lakh as compensation for the families of those killed in the stampede.
“We have announced Rs 1 lakh announced for the next kin of the deceased in the incident and Rs 50,000 for the grievously injured persons and Rs 25,000 for those who have suffered simple injury in the stampede,” he said.
Frantic relatives today mobbed officials seeking information about victims of yesterday’s stampede.
There were chaotic scenes at the Allahabad railway station and local hospitals here treating the 39 injured in the tragedy with relatives running from pillar to post to get information about their near and dear ones.
“A probe will follow once we are through with ferrying pilgrims back to the places they had arrived from”, Alok Johri, General Manager of the North Central Railway zone, told reporters.
The stampede occurred at 7 PM yesterday at Platforms No 5 and 6 of the railway station where thousands of passengers, mostly Maha Kumbh devotees returning after taking the holy dip at the Sangam on the occasion of Mauni Amavasya, had gathered to board a train.
At the Swaroop Rani Nehru Hospital in the city where at least 25 injured persons are admitted, some of them in a critical condition, Divisional Commissioner of Allahabad Devesh Chaturvedi and Dr S P Singh, Principal of Motilal Nehru Medical College to which the hospital is attached, were mobbed by people angry over “lack of proper care and facilities”.
The officials, who had visited the hospital to take stock of the relief work, had a tough time assuaging the frayed tempers.
Some of the bereaved people complained that they were being prevented from taking away the bodies of their near and dear ones.
The official requested them to “have patience till the post-mortem and other formalities” were complete.
Similar scenes were witnessed at the Railway hospital, situated close to the station, where 14 others who have sustained injuries in the stampede that had occurred near platform number 6, are undergoing treatment.
UP Chief Secretary Javed Usmani said an inquiry committee set up to investigate the reasons behind the stampede at the railway station here has been directed to submit its report within one month.
The committee headed by UP Board of Revenue Chairman Jagan Matthews has been directed to look into the sequence of events that led to the stampede, underscore lapses, if any, on the part of officials entrusted with managing the crowd and suggest measures for preventing recurrence of such incidents, he said. (PTI)
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