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| By Santosh H K Narayan |
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Tuesday, September 30, 2008 (08:35:58) |
| Tags : Chamunda Devi Temple, Stampede, Jaswant Singh |
You can blame me for the stampede: Jaswant Singh |
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New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party leader Jaswant Singh on Tuesday said that he took the responsibility of the stampede at Chamunda Devi temple that killed at least 180 people and injured over 250 others at Jodhpur. "As I am one of the founder trustees of the Chamuda Devi temple trust, you can blame me for the stampede if you want," he said. Singh, however, accepted that there could have been lapses from the side of the temple management as huge crowd of devotees was expected on the first day of Navratra.
Expressing his grief over the unfortunate incident, Singh, who has represented Jodhpur constituency in 1989 in the Lok Sabha, however, emphasised that 'appropriate arrangements were in place' to conduct the 'darshan' smoothly. "It is a disaster. The sufferers were human lives and not just numbers. I came to know that the State government has set-up an inquiry into the incident. The temple is not a private property of anyone and runs through a trust. As the incident has happened the inquiry would make it clear whether the management is responsible for it," he said.
He also differed from making parallels between loss of lives in terror attacks and like this one and said that the acts of extremists were extra-state activities. He said that there was no hint till now of the involvement of any anti-social elements in the stampede. "As per my information, there was huge rush for the darshan as it was the first day of Navratra. Some young people started pushing the crowd and in the process few of them fell-down which caused the stampede. The way to the temple is narrow and due to coconut water it became slippery as well," said Singh. |
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