BENGALURU: Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar on Wednesday said that after the stampede during the RCB’s IPL victory celebrations, he rushed to the stadium and directed to end the celebrations within 10 minutes. “I went to the stadium and gave them a direction and requested that the programme should be closed within 10 minutes. The RCB team also agreed. We requested Virat Kohli also to just go. For courtesy sake, to show that they handed over the gift to Karnataka, they gave the cup to me and we closed the event,” the DyCM told media persons.
The DyCM said the RCB team had requested an open-vehicle parade from HAL airport itself. “But our police officials had advised us against it citing law and order. After deliberating it with the CM, we had decided not to grant permission for any victory parade,” he said.
The DyCM said the police did their best to manage the situation and no one had expected a sudden surge in crowd.
He said the police officers had advised the government not to allow players to be taken in an open bus and that was the reason he rushed to the airport to ensure that nothing untoward happened. The DyCM said they were very cautious during the programme at Vidhana Soudha.
Asked about the RCB releasing the programme schedule on Wednesday morning without consulting the state government, the DyCM said the programme schedule was released, but he doesn’t want to find others’ faults now.
Thursday’s programmes postponed: The DyCM said all the government programmes, including the Environment Day celebrations scheduled to be held on Thursday, are postponed. They will only hold a cabinet meeting on Thursday, he said. He slammed the BJP for doing politics over the tragic event. “Several people have lost their lives due to the tragic stampede during RCB victory celebrations and their families are mourning. But the insensitive BJP is busy doing politics over dead bodies. The tragedy should not have happened but it has happened. This is a time to treat the injured and condole the deaths and not do politics over dead bodies,” he said.