A senior UP ministerresigned Monday owning moral responsibility for Sunday'sstampede which has claimed 36 lives even as a blame gameerupted between the Centre and the UP government on who wasresponsbible for the tragedy.
Two probes, one by the UP government and another by theRailways, to go into what triggered the stampede as alsoorganisational lapses, have been ordered.
CMO Allahabad Dr Prabhakar said 14 more people diedduring treatment, taking the death toll to 36. The victimsinclude 26 women, 9 men and a child. Bodies of 20 of thedeceased have been identified.
Taking moral responsibility for the stampede, UP CabinetMinister Mohammad Azam Khan resigned as the in-charge of KumbhMela.
"Though the incident took place outside the Kumbh Melapremises, I take moral responsibility and resign as thein-charge of the Kumbh. I am sending my resignation to ChiefMinister Akhilesh Yadav", Khan told reporters in Lucknow.
The state government blamed the Railways for not makingadequate arrangements to deal with the rush. The ministryfeels if the state government had dealt with the situation ina better way, the incident could have been averted.
The Chief Minister said, "We all know who is at fault forthis incident."
In Delhi, Railway Minister P K Bansal said,"There are atotal of 12,000 trains on Indian Railway's 65,000 km longroute system which carries 2.3 crore passengers in a day. Soall the trains cannot reach at one spot in a day as there arelimitations on the part of Railways to carry crores ofpassengers in a given day."
He was asked whether Railways was prepared to handle theKumbh rush of 3 crore passengers in a day.
Bansal announced Rs one lakh as compensation for thefamilies of those killed in the stampede.
"We have announced Rs 1 lakh announced for the next kinof the deceased in the incident and Rs 50,000 for thegrievously injured persons and Rs 25,000 for those who havesuffered simple injury in the stampede," he said.