‘Was Consulted': Siddaramaiah Changes Stance On RCB Event Week After Bengaluru Stampede
Last Updated:
Siddaramaiah said: "Govindraj called up the governor and handed me the phone...I told the governor that since I was attending the Vidhana Soudha event, he should too..."
After distancing himself from the June 4 RCB felicitation event for days, Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah has now changed his stance — he said he was consulted for the Vidhan Soudha function.
The Karnataka government went ahead with a felicitation ceremony for IPL team Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) at the Vidhana Soudha on June 4, despite a clear warning from the police about potential security risks. Later that evening, a massive crowd of fans gathered outside the M Chinnaswamy Stadium for celebration of RCB's maiden trophy win in 18 years, resulting in a stampede that left 11 people dead.
Siddaramaiah had earlier said his government the state administration had no role in organising the felicitation event at the stadium and that he was merely invited to the Vidhan Soudha function.
'On the 4th of this month, the KSCA and RCB representatives held a felicitation programme for the players. At around 11:29 am, I was invited. They requested to hold the programme, and I agreed. The Chief Secretary also called me about this, and I said yes."
'The governor also attended the felicitation. The media is played it out in such a way, saying that the governor came of his own volition. That's not correct."
'My political secretary Govindraj called up the governor and handed me the phone, telling that the governor too was coming. I told the governor that since I was attending, he should attend as well. He attended, and the felicitation ended in 20 minutes due to the rains. He left from there, and I headed back to my residence," said the CM.
In a letter dated June 4, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) MN Karibasvanna had warned of security concerns and flagged these to the DPAR.
In a letter addressed to DPAR head G Satyavathi, Vidhana Soudha security division officials flagged serious concerns about inadequate personnel to manage security arrangements for the high-profile event.
First Published:
June 11, 2025, 18:41 IST
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Deccan Herald
an hour ago
- Deccan Herald
BJP's tweet on RCB victory celebration a hasty one: C T Ravi
Addressing media persons on Thursday, he said the stampede in Bengaluru that claimed the lives of 11 cricket fans during the celebration of RCB team's victory in final of IPL-2025 after 18 years, was not an accidental incident.
The Print
2 hours ago
- The Print
Siddaramaiah cites 1995 law to justify Congress high command's decision to scrap 2015 caste survey
He also said that the socio-economic and educational survey , better known as the caste survey, was over a decade old and needed to be re-enumerated even though his core support base of Backward Classes groups have been pressuring him to release the data. 'Already 10 years are over (and) according to section 11, clause 1 of the Backward Classes Act 1995, it is very clear that after the 10 years (sic) period, a new survey is to be conducted,' Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said Thursday. Bengaluru: A day after the Congress tried to mask its decision to scrap the findings of the 2015 caste survey, Karnataka government Thursday cited clauses from the Karnataka State Commission for Backward Classes Act, 1995, to justify its high command's directive to do away with the report. 'In 10 years, the population has gone up, socio-economic and educational changes have happened. In the Backward Classes Commission Act, it is clearly mentioned that after 10 years a new survey needs to be undertaken,' he added. He was addressing the media after a special cabinet session was convened in Bengaluru to discuss the caste survey. On Tuesday, the Congress high command tried to find middle ground between Siddaramaiah and members of his cabinet opposed to the decision to release the findings of the 2015 survey. Political analysts and observers ThePrint spoke to suggested this decision reflects the party leadership's careful manoeuvring to reconcile differing–and confrontational–viewpoints within Karnataka, effectively diverting attention from the Chinnaswamy stadium stampede and prevent the Centre from taking credit for initiating the nationwide caste census. Congress general secretary in-charge of organisation K.C. Venugopal said Tuesday that the party accepts the 2015 caste survey in principle but also called for re-enumeration. The decision was viewed as a setback to Siddaramaiah who has advocated for long to address the dominant status enjoyed by groups like Lingayats and Vokkaligas. Insistence on conducting the entire exercise again is also perceived as a political maneuver for upstage Prime Minister Narendra Modi's announcement for a nationwide caste census. Also Read: How redoing Karnataka 'caste census' weakens CM Siddaramaiah without strengthening Shivakumar 'New survey to be conducted in 90 days' In 2015, during his first term as chief minister, Siddaramaiah formed a single-person panel comprising then Karnataka State Commission for Backward Classes (KSBCC) chairperson H. Kantharaj, which initiated work on the caste survey on 11 April that year. It completed the survey on 30 May, 2015—having put forth 54 questions to a total of 5.98 crore people or 94.17 percent of the state's population. But the report, which cost roughly Rs 190 crores, was never accepted as political leaders and seers from dominant communities are believed to have pressured the government to shelve it. Siddaramaiah did not accept the findings and the Congress was ousted from power three years later in 2018. He also did not pursue its coalition partner, Janata Dal (Secular) or JD(S), to do the same in 2019. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) did not want to accept the report since its then chief minister, B.S. Yediyurappa, was leading the agitation to scrap the findings. 'Let H.D. Kumaraswamy, B.Y. Vijayendra and R. Ashoka call for a press conference and announce they are in favour of the earlier caste census. They are making a lot of comments, we will respond to them in the Assembly session. The media must highlight contradictions in the stand of Opposition over caste census. They are trying to politicise it,' Shivakumar said Thursday. In February last year, Siddaramaiah accepted the report but did not open the files until earlier this year. When he did do it, and some of the findings were leaked, protests by so-called dominant communities intensified as the population numbers of these groups were shown to be significantly lower than what was projected earlier. Caste plays a very important role in Karnataka's politics and society. BJP is believed to have the backing of Lingayats while JD(S) depends on the Vokkaligas. The Congress under Siddaramaiah has been backed by AHINDA (Kannada acronym for minorities, Backward Classes and Dalits). Caste trumps party affiliations as Siddaramaiah's own cabinet ministers, including Shivakumar, M.B. Patil, S.S. Mallikarjun, Lakshmi Hebbalkar, Eshwar Khandre and several others opposed the release of the report. Siddaramaiah is from the backward Kuruba community and his support base took aim at Shivakumar every time the latter would try to broach the unwritten pact that he would replace the former halfway through the term. Siddaramaiah camp further complicated matters for the party by promoting a narrative that replacing a chief minister from Backward Classes with Shivakumar, who is from a dominant community, could be politically unfavorable. 'Siddaramaiah and Congress used the Backward Classes for their political agenda and then sacrificed the latter. Siddaramaiah claims that he became CM with the support of AHINDA but has today shown that he will cheat the backward classes to remain in power,' R. Raghu Kautilya, president of Karnataka BJP's OBC morcha said Thursday. Shivakumar said the Congress was carrying out the survey again to further its objective of achieving social justice and not for the sake of politics. The state government said the new survey will be completed in 90 days of it being commissioned. (Edited by Amrtansh Arora) Also Read: Karnataka protests 'ban' on its Totapuri mangoes entering AP, Naidu govt says 'rescue your own farmers'
The Hindu
2 hours ago
- The Hindu
From celebration to tragedy: all in a day's work
There was victory in the air in Bengaluru on June 4. After a 17-year-long wait, the city's favourite franchise, Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB), had clinched the trophy in the Indian Premier League (IPL) the previous night. The team was landing in Bengaluru from Ahmedabad, and a victory parade was being planned. For a city reporter, this meant a long day. At around 10 a.m., the reporting team got on a conference call to plan the stories. We discussed how the city had not slept after the victory, how fans from the city had travelled to Ahmedabad to watch the final match, and how people on the Internet had created a thousand different memes and reels. We also discussed threadbare how we would cover the proposed victory parade. We anticipated that the Central Business District (CBD), where our office is located, would be choked with vehicles from the afternoon as the victory parade was scheduled to begin after 3 p.m. While loyal newspaper readers may be willing to wait for more than a day to read about the celebrations that unfolded that night in Bengaluru, online readers move on to other websites if the stories they are looking for are not uploaded on time. So, before leaving for office that morning, I filed some stories on the fan frenzy, describing how firecrackers had kept the skies aglow the previous night, people had danced madly on the streets, and bike rallies had kept everyone awake. My plan was simple: get to office early, file the special stories for the day, and keep the evening free as a great deal of coordination was necessary for covering such a mammoth event. An army of interns was stationed at multiple points at the city to watch the parade pass by. By around 1 p.m., fans clad in RCB colours begin to gather in CBD. I noted it down to draw a timeline later in the day. By 3 p.m., I finished filing three stories on the celebrations for online. But shortly, the unexpected happened. As lakhs of fans gathered around the M. Chinnaswamy stadium and Vidhana Soudha, we first got the news that a woman had lost consciousness. Then, more bad news trickled in: a person had died due to a 'stampede-like situation'. My colleague immediately checked with her hospital sources and found that at least four people had died. Within an hour, seeing the raucous crowd, we knew that the numbers would climb into double-digits. It did not take too long for us to find out that 11 people had died, and most of them very young. The mood quickly shifted in the newsroom, just as it did in the rest of the city. We decided that the stories of celebrations would no longer be reported for the print edition. I frantically called the interns one after another to make sure they were safe, and asked them to come back to office. All the reporters in the newsroom breathed a sigh of relief when the last intern made it back to the office. Then it was the turn of senior reporters to fan out. One went to the stadium, another to the hospital near the stadium, and yet another to the mortuary at the government hospital. After gathering inputs from multiple sources, colleagues, and eyewitnesses, I wrote a detailed story on how the celebrations quickly turned into a tragedy. I ended up drawing a timeline, but it was not the one I had planned earlier. There were steady developments. Reporters kept filing stories — about the chaos, the mismanagement, the panic, and the grief — without a break. They filed enough stories to fill nearly all the city pages. At around 11 p.m., I was finally done with work. When I made my way back home, the air was heavy with mourning. The city, which had been alive with celebrations just 24 hours ago, had fallen completely silent.
