We have all well known that 27 pilgrims died in a stampede on the banks of the Godavari river in Andhra Pradesh on the first day of a major religious festival Godavari Pushkaram. The incident took place between 7.30 am and 8 am on an opening day.
The stampede took place at around 9 a.m. after VIPs led by Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu performed sacred rituals in the river. Here is the take of Arnab Goswami and our TDP leaders failed to answer his questions.
Arnab Goswami Plays With TDP Leaders:
All the opposition parties blamed CM Chandrababu Naidu for this stampede, blaming VVIP culture. It is widely accepted and corroborated by facts on the ground that poor crowd management was responsible for the stampede
Reacting to this incident East Godavari Collector Arun Kumar said: “We have received crowd of more than the capacity of the ghat which is about 15,000 whereas we today had about 50,000 outside the ghat. There was pushing and pulling between the crowd coming out of the Ghat and those entering”.
Huge crowd, poor crowd-control, the closing of the ghat for more than two hours after Pushkaram began since VIPs were taking holy dip apparently led to the stampede says the report.
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