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'I don't have any connection...': Karnataka CM blames KSCA and other officials for Bengaluru stampede
Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah has broken his silence on the Bengaluru stampede that killed 11 people during RCB's IPL 2025 victory celebrations. He has blamed KSCA and officials for the incident and distanced himself from the event. read more
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has reacted to the tragic stampede incident that took place outside the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru, saying it was a very unfortunate incident that should not have happened. The stampede killed 11 people on 4 June when a huge crowd gathered to take part in Royal Challengers Bengaluru's (RCB) IPL 2025 victory celebration.
Karnataka CM blames KSCA and other officials
Speaking to the media on Sunday, Siddaramaiah blamed the Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA) and local officials for the stampede. The KSCA had invited the state government to take part in the felicitation ceremony at the Vidhana Soudha. As the event at state assembly was ongoing, the stampede incident occurred near the Chinnaswamy Stadium, where the RCB was scheduled to visit after the ceremony.
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'This incident shouldn't have happened, it happened at the Cricket stadium. I don't have any connection with the cricket stadium. It was an unfortunate incident, it shouldn't have happened. Such an incident never happened after I became the CM. Prima facie it seems to have happened because of the officials' fault, so we have taken action. Everyone is in pain, including me,' he said.
'The Secretary and Treasurer of the KSCA invited me to the felicitation programme. It's not a function we organised. It's a function they organised, and I was merely invited. They additionally informed me that the Governor was to attend it. Hence, I attended the programme. Apart from that, I am not aware of anything else,' said Siddaramaiah.
The opposition is demanding the resignation of the chief minister and deputy chief minister over this issue. They have blamed the government for failing to properly manage RCB's victory celebrations. The main opposition party BJP, has said that the Karnataka government was only interested in using RCB's maiden IPL title win for a photo-op and was not thinking about the people.
The blame-game continues
Earlier, the KSCA shifted the blame to the RCB team and the event management company, stating that their responsibility was only to obtain the required permissions from the government. According to them, handling the crowd and managing entry at the stadium was RCB's responsibility.
Asked about the allegation that the then Bengaluru Police commissioner B Dayananda was made scapegoat, he said, the Commissioner alone has not been suspended, five officers have been suspended, and the intelligence chief has been changed.
'My political secretary, K Govindaraj has been removed. We have taken a series of actions, not the police commissioner alone,' he added.
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Siddaramaiah cites 1995 law to justify Congress high command's decision to scrap 2015 caste survey
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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'
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After high command diktat, Karnataka government junks caste census report, to go for fresh survey
Karnataka's cabinet on Thursday decided to conduct a fresh socio-educational survey of various castes in the state and not to implement the recommendations of the previous survey–popularly called the caste census–conducted by the Karnataka State Commission for Backward Classes. The decision came after the Congress high command met Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar on Tuesday, after which the party leadership asked Siddaramaiah to go for a 're-enumeration' of the populations of the different castes in the state. The diktat from the high command came when the chief minister was on the verge of having his cabinet clear the recommendations of the survey report in a special cabinet meeting held on Thursday. Siddaramaiah, who announced the decision at a news conference, referred to a provision under the Karnataka State Commission for Backward Classes Act to defend the fresh survey. As per Section 11, Clause 1 of the Act, the findings of the Socio-economic and Education Survey carried out in 2015 would be invalid as 10 years had passed since then. 'The State Government may at any time, and shall, at the expiration of ten years from the coming into force of this Act and every succeeding period of ten years thereafter, undertake revision of the lists with a view to excluding from such lists those classes who have ceased to be backward classes or for including in such lists, new backward classes,' the clause reads. 'The provision is very clear,' Siddaramaiah said, adding '…the cabinet, considering these clauses, has decided that since the commission conducted the survey 10 years ago, we will ask the commission to go for a fresh survey.' Responding to queries, the chief minister said the modalities of the exercise would be announced soon but the survey would be completed in a 90-day time frame. The recommendations of the survey report–such as shifting Kurubas from Category 2A (Other Backward Classes) to Category 1 (Backward Castes), enhancing reservation for Muslims under the 2B category from four to eight per cent, enhancing reservation for the 3A and 3B categories, which include the dominant Vokkaliga and Lingayat communities, from existing four and five per cent to seven and eight per cent, respectively–will now be scrapped. The re-survey is considered a setback for the chief minister, who had along with senior ministers such as Satish Jarkiholi and H C Mahadevappa pushed for the implementation of the survey. At the same time, the dominant Lingayat and Vokkaliga communities and their leaders had cast apprehensions on the survey and publicly opposed its findings. Sources say that Shivakumar had opposed the report in the cabinet meeting held on June 5 and flew to Delhi earlier this week seeking the intervention of the high command. 'Both Vokkaligas and Lingayats teaming up due to the report would not augur well for the party in the next elections,' an aide close to Shivakumar said, claiming it to be the reason for the Vokkaliga leader to lobby against the report. Apart from that, prominent Lingayat leaders too are learnt to have complained to the Congress high command about the 'complications' the report would create if its recommendations were to be implemented. Siddaramaiah commissioned the survey in 2015 during his first tenure as chief minister and it was accepted by the state cabinet in April this caste re-survey, Karnataka caste census, re-enumeration of castes, Siddaramaiah, Vokkaliga, Lingayat, D K Shivakumar
