NEW DELHI, Feb 17: Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw Monday ruled out any conspiracy behind the stampede at the New Delhi Railway Station and said there was also no extraordinary rush at the two platforms at the time of the incident.
“No conspiracy looks at the moment,” he said while interacting with mediapersons at Rail Bhawan here.
He also said information available till now showed that there was no extraordinary rush at the New Delhi Railway Station on Saturday when the stampede happened.
He dismissed platform change announcement as a cause of the stampede, saying, “The inquiry committee is looking into it deeply.”
Railway officials said the total capacity of all 16 platforms at the busy New Delhi station at any point of time is 48,000 passengers as each platform can hold 3000.
“On February 15, the day of the incident, between 6 pm and 8 pm, around 12,208 unreserved tickets were sold while on other days, this number is usually around 9,600. Between 8 pm and 10 pm while on other days 8,900 unreserved tickets are sold, on February 15, 7,600 unreserved tickets were sold,” a railway official said.
“One Prayagraj Special was operated from platform number 12 at 7:15 pm and seeing the increase in the sale of tickets, one more special was planned which was waiting at the same platform at 8:50,” the official added.
An announcement was made around 8:30 pm for a Prayagraj Special train at platform 12 and some passengers got confused and thought that the announcement was made for Prayagraj Express, the official said.
“They were at platform 14 to board the Prayagraj Express but it looked like the announcement confused them and they started moving for platform no 12,” the official said.
“While climbing the stairs, where a lot of passengers were sitting, one of them with a heavy load on his head, became unstable and fell behind on other passengers causing a stampede,” the official added.
Vaishnaw said that the war room set up at Rail Bhawan to get live feed from various stations including all platforms of New Delhi Railway Station showed that these stations didn’t have extraordinary crowds.
“We have learnt from the past failures and mistakes and that’s the reason such a huge crowd of passengers have been managed so well. While in the previous Kumbh Mela, only 4,000 trains were run, this time we planned 13,000 trains and 12,583 trains have already been operated so far,” he said.
“No country in the world faces such a big mobilisation. Railway officials have worked day and night. It is extremely difficult work to manage such a huge crowd,” Vaishnaw said.
According to him, 2.9 crore devotees have used trains for the Kumbh Mela so far.
The minister also justified the disbursement of cash amount to family members of the deceased and injured saying that it is according to practice.
“To pay ex-gratia money in cash is a practice. People cannot access their bank accounts in crisis situations. Aggrieved family members need money for medicine, ambulances or other things. Almost in all the countries in the world, the administrative machinery makes cash payments,” he said.
When asked about railway circulars mentioning that more than Rs 50,000 cannot be paid in cash, the minister said that limit is meant for making payment in normal situations but not for extraordinary situations like the one on Saturday. (PTI)
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