Mixed messages, mismanagement, mess: Who's responsible for stampede at RCB event?

India Today

2 days ago

The road outside Chinnaswamy Stadium turned chaotic on Thursday as an unprecedented crowd gathered for a felicitation event of Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) after their historic IPL win. Over 2 lakh RCB fans turned up to celebrate at a venue that could only host 30,000 people. What followed was a deadly stampede that exposing glaring lapses, confusion, and a complete breakdown in coordination between the franchise, local authorities, and event organisers.advertisementAs the players were being felicitated inside, complete chaos unfolded on the road and 11 people lost their lives while another 47 were injured. Despite the tragedy just outside, the felicitation ceremony continued, drawing criticism over what many called gross insensitivity.Later, the state government announced a magisterial inquiry and asked the panel to submit a report within 15 days. A solatium of Rs 10 lakh has been announced for families of the deceased by the state government. But the bigger question remains - why was this not planned properly? Why did the event continue despite the chaos unfolding outside? Who is responsible?FREE PASSES
Initially, passes were issued for the event. But few had managed to get passes and after it was announced that everyone would be allowed inside, there was a huge rush once the gates were opened.PARADE OR NO PARADE?advertisementOriginally, an open-top bus parade was planned to run from Vidhana Soudha to Chinnaswamy Stadium. But around 1 PM, officials announced the parade had been cancelled due to traffic congestion. Instead, the team would meet Chief Minister Siddaramaiah at Vidhana Soudha and proceed directly to the stadium.Despite this, RCB's official X (formerly Twitter) account continued to promote a 'Victory Parade,' encouraging fans to gather in large numbers. At 3:14 PM, the account posted:At 3:14 pm, RCB shared a tweet, "RCB Victory Parade: Today at 5 pm IST. Victory Parade will be followed by celebrations at the Chinnaswamy stadium. We request all fans to follow guidelines set by police and other authorities, so that everyone can enjoy the roadshow peacefully."
The revised advisory also said that entry to the venue will be restricted to those with valid passesThe RCB, however, also shared a link to free passes.The result? Massive crowds gathered in anticipation of a grand celebration. With no barricades or real crowd management in place, the scene turned into a logistical nightmare. Eyewitnesses described a near-stampede outside the stadium gates, with children and elderly fans struggling to stay on their feet in the crush.ONLY 2 AMBULANCESadvertisementVisuals showed police shifting injured and unconscious people to a nearby hospital. Besides those dead and injured, many who came to watch the celebrations fainted.Nikhil Naz, Consulting Editor – Sports, who was at the stadium said people started pushing into the crowd, trying to move either to the left or the right side of the stadium. In the melee, young people-mostly girls and some teenage boys-got trampled upon. There were no security personnel in this area. Security had restricted themselves to only the gates.He said because there were only two ambulances inside, some weren't lucky enough to get one."Those who didn't get an ambulance were carried in the arms by security personnel. These security people ran towards the main road to find cars to take these unconscious people to the nearby hospital. Because the roads immediately outside the stadium were blocked by crowds, unconscious people had to be carried for 500 metres to reach a point where regular traffic was flowing," he said.POOR PLANNINGKarnataka Minister Priyank Kharge admitted that the event could have been planned better.advertisement"Government has owned up responsibility. This could have been avoided with better planning and coordination. We did what best we could we couldn't manage crowd," he said.Clearly, cops present at the site failed to control the crowd and a mismanagement was clearly visible. Politicians turned the celebration into a photo-op frenzy and many even brought their families to Vidhana Soudha to pose with the cricketers.SHIVAKUMAR ATTENDS EVENT DESPITE CHAOSWhat raised further eyebrows was the presence of Karnataka's Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar, who not only attended the felicitation event at the stadium but also brushed off concerns later.'It was just a 10-minute event,' he told reporters, offering a feeble justification in the wake of the chaos.'I went to the stadium and gave them a direction and requested that the programme should be closed within 10 minutes. The RCB team also agreed. We requested Virat Kohli also to just go. For courtesy sake, to show that they handed over the gift to Karnataka, they gave the cup to me and we closed the event,'BCCI WASHES ITS HANDS OFFAdding to the mess, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) issued a statement saying it had 'no role' in the event and cited 'local lapses' for the disorder.advertisementBCCI secretary Devajit Saikia said, "I think there were some lapses. The BCCI has no role in it."IPL Chairman Arun Dhumal told India Today, "For the BCCI, the IPL concluded last night. We had no knowledge of such an incident occurring, so how can we be held responsible for it?"He added, "How can we be held responsible for something like this? It is indeed a very tragic incident, and we extend our deepest condolences. But we cannot be held accountable for something over which we had no control."'RCB WANTED EVENT'Karnataka Home Minister G Parameshwar on Thursday said RCB and the Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA) wanted to do this ceremony."It is not us. We didn't make any request regarding the celebration to RCB and KSCA. They organised this. We felt that the government should felicitate. Just because it was a Bengaluru team, we felt that we should be a part of the celebration. That's all. We didn't ask that we would do this but it's RCB and KSCA who brought the team to Bengaluru for celebrations," he said while speaking to reporters.As questions mount over accountability, many are now asking whether a cricketing celebration was worth the risk to public safety.Tune InMust Watch