Samajwadi Party Chief Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday took a swipe at Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath over the stampede at Mahakumbh mela and said that when the President and Prime Minister of the country expressed condolence after 17 hours the (State) government accepted it. These are the people who cannot accept the truth even today.
The SP Chief not only demanded for an all-party meeting to be called to issue a clarification on the incident but also to present the figures for the deaths in the Maha Kumbh accident, treatment of injured, availability of medicines, doctors, food, water, and transport in the parliament.
"I ask them to give the real numbers of those who died in Maha Kumbh. I demand an all-party meeting to discuss and debate the tragic incident in Prayagraj,"he said.
"The figures for the deaths in Maha Kumbh accident, treatment of injured, availability of medicines, doctors, food, water, transport should be presented in the Parliament. For the Maha Kum tragedy, there should be strict punitive action against those responsible and those who have hidden the truth should be punished. We ask the double-engine government, if there was no guilt, then why were the figures suppressed, hidden and erased?," he added.
Akhilesh Yadav has demanded stringent action against those responsible for the Mahakumbh tragedy and those who hid the facts, questioning the government's decision to suppress the casualty numbers.
"For the Mahakumbh tragedy, there should be strict punitive action against those responsible and those who have hidden the truth should be punished. We ask the double-engine government, if there was no guilt, then why were the figures suppressed, hidden, and erased?" he remarked.
"Log punye kamane aaye the aur apno ke shav lekar gaye hai (People came to earn merit, but they left with the bodies of their loved ones)," the SP Chief added.
Sharpening his criticism of the Uttar Pradesh government, Yadav pointed out that where proper arrangements should have been made, political campaigning took priority instead.
The SP supremo further demanded that the Army should take over disaster management of the Maha Kumbh."
He claimed the government used JCB machines (earth movers) and tractor trollies to clear the bodies lying around after the stampede.
"People came to earn blessings (punya), but had to leave with the bodies of near and dear ones. The miracle here was that the government found bodies but was refusing to accept the numbers," Yadav said.