CHENNAI: The inefficiency in coordination between government departments for one of the largest public events this year that had over 10 lakh people in attendance, has cost five people their lives. The state government has so far failed to pin the responsibility for the sequence of unfortunate events nor offered clarity as to whether anything went wrong.
An official statement that came from Chief Minister MK Stalin a day later on Monday afternoon said the police, fire and rescue, Greater Chennai Corporation and the health department had coordinated to make arrangements beyond the extent of what the Indian Air Force had requested.
However, the statement did not provide specifics on the arrangements made. Earlier on Monday, Health Minister Ma Subramanian provided details on the arrangements made by his department, including ambulances and hospital beds.
The public, however, had two major complaints – the lack of drinking water and an overwhelmed public transport system that failed them.
When contacted, metro water sources said they received requests to place water tanks in 16 locations that were earmarked by the IAF along the service road. As per the request, 16 3000-litre tanks were placed along the service road, officials said.
However, this would mean that there was around 48,000 litres of water at the venue, nowhere close to being able to cater to the actual people present.
“We did make arrangements for these tanks to be refilled but by the time, our lorries could not go anywhere near the venue because the people had taken to the streets and the tanks could not be refilled,” official sources said.
As for public transport, only MTC said they received requests to run additional services beforehand whereas both MRTS and CMRL acted only after chaos ensued.
Southern Railway officials said they increased the services from 100 to 110 and that ten additional trains were operated during peak hours. Chennai Metro Rail, in an attempt to remedy the situation after the overcrowding of their stations, said its trains would be running at 3.5 minute-frequency between the Washermanpet Metro & AG DMS Metro section.
While the entry to the venue was staggered, with people beginning to trickle in from as early as 8 am for the show that began at 11 am, they were allowed to exit from all the exit points at once, quickly spilling over to the streets and leading to the traffic coming to a grinding halt.
The public department was reportedly responsible for coordinating the arrangements to be made, according to sources. However, it is unclear if there was adequate coordination between the departments.
Speaking to TNIE, Greater Chennai Police (GCP) Commissioner A Arun said around 8,000 policemen from Law and Order, Traffic and Home Guards and some more from Intelligence were deployed to manage the event.
“The crowd was more than what we had expected from our side. We had created 45 boxes in the sand area and barricades to ensure the successful conduct of the event. When the event got over, all the people tried leaving together which meant they were able to move very slowly. The slow dispersion of people caused the problem,” Arun said.
“Since the majority of people came by public transport, they were walking towards the boarding points. Choking of traffic was witnessed even during other events like music concerts and it was something similar in this case,” he added.
All the policemen on duty were on the spot till 4pm till everybody left. We ensured that there was no stampede.