Stampede: Bihar BJP seeks president’s intervention

A BJP delegation led by senior leaders on Sunday met Bihar governor DY Patil and handed over a memorandum addressed to President Pranab Mukherjee seeking ‘justice’ in the stampede on Dusshera day in which 33 persons, mostly women and children, were killed and several others were injured.

The delegation was led by MP and actor Shatrughan Sinha, Leader of Opposition in Bihar Legislative Assembly Nand Kishore Yadav and state BJP chief Mangal Pandey, with several other leaders.

Talking to mediapersons after submitting the memorandum, Yadav said, ‘The state government has shown its irresponsibility time and again. It has no right to continue in power. We are seeking President Pranab Mukherjee’s intervention and action in this regard.’

In the signed letter addressed to the President, the saffron party mentioned the stampede during the Chhath festival in 2012 in which 21 persons were trampled to death and several others were injured, as well as, the bomb blasts during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hunkar Rally in which six lives were lost and many were injured.

‘The state government had promised after the Chhath tragedy that systematic arrangements for festivals and programmes that attract big crowds, but after that it slept and no arrangements were made,’ the BJP memorandum said. It also pointed out that the Ravan Vadh ceremony at Gandhi Maidan in Patna is an old one and the government knew that lakhs of people will attend it.