Bengaluru stampede victim's mother slams Karnataka government: It was insane...
The mother of Divyanshi — one of the 11 people killed in the stampede outside Bengaluru's Chinnaswamy Stadium — has held the Karnataka government responsible for her daughter's death, calling the tragedy 'insane' and a result of sheer mismanagement.Divyanshi, died in the stampede that broke out on Wednesday evening during Royal Challengers Bengaluru's IPL 2025 victory celebrations. The stampede claimed 11 lives and injured 47 fans as a sea of people — estimated at 2 to 3 lakh — overwhelmed the stadium premises, which only has a capacity of 35,000.advertisement"I blame the traffic police. Did they not know how to handle a crowd? There was enough police deployment, yet no one was managing anything. It was insane that the government went ahead with celebrations inside the stadium while this was happening outside,," she said, breaking down in front of reporters.
Divyanshi, a teenager from Andhra Pradesh, had travelled to Bengaluru with her mother on Wednesday to see her idol, Virat Kohli. "We were sitting comfortably on the footpath. We didn't even plan to go inside. She was so fascinated by cricket — she knew everything about the players. She just wanted to see Kohli," her mother said.The stampede broke out around 3.30 pm as the crowd swelled uncontrollably. "I was running out of breath. I managed to pull one person to safety. And then, in just five minutes, Divyanshi was gone. I thought she had gone inside. Later, I saw her".advertisementShe remembered her daughter as a bright, mature child — a swimming champion, a gold medallist, and a role model. "She was an angel. Only two years in her new school and the teachers were already so proud of her. I was 20 when I had her. We grew up together. She is irreplaceable. If I weren't around, she would've raised her brother like a mother".Meanwhile, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has announced Rs 10 lakh compensation for the families of those who died and ordered a magisterial inquiry. However, while drawing parallels with past tragedies like the Kumbh Mela stampede, he insisted there was no administrative failure.The BJP has seized on the incident to target the Congress-led state government. Party leaders including Amit Malviya and Tejasvi Surya accused Siddaramaiah and Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar of 'criminal negligence,' alleging the two were more interested in photo-ops with cricketers than ensuring crowd safety.
IN THIS STORY#Karnataka#Bengaluru
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hindu
28 minutes ago
- The Hindu
Fading memories of freedom
As distance grows from their freedom movements, both India and Bangladesh are reshaping what it means to be anti-colonial The current regime in Bangladesh wants to disconnect the country from its history of freedom struggle against Pakistan. It has removed the portrait of its founding President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman from currency notes. It is also seeking new friendship with Pakistan. The people of Bangladesh fought two freedom struggles in the 20th century: the first to liberate themselves from the British, and then from Pakistan. It is a place that won freedom twice within 24 years: in 1947 and 1971. The ideas of the self and oppressor change periodically. Bangladesh, now 55 years away from its second freedom struggle, thinks Islam is a more powerful bond for the people than language, which had separated it from what was then West Pakistan. Correspondingly, the iconography of the nation is being altered. India's collective memory of the freedom struggle is also undergoing a transformation. The most powerful political force of India today, Hindutva, sees independence won in 1947 only as a partial victory. Its more expansive version of anti-colonialism sees Islam and western modernity as vestiges of foreign influence on the nation. It is trying to scrape those influences from public consciousness through various interventions. This new decolonisation drive is directed inward: amending curricula, laws, administrative structures, and more. The euphoria of a newly crossed milestone for a nation lasts for a finite time and its lingering sweetness fades with the passage of generations. The new wave of Islamic radicalism in Bangladesh poses new security threats for India. The Sheikh Hasina government in Dhaka was sensitive to India's security concerns, and that was one of the reasons for the Islamist hostility towards her. Uttar Pradesh and Maine: sister States? What is common between Maine and Uttar Pradesh, States in the United States and India, respectively. Nothing really, you might think, but these States have recently barred or disqualified lawmakers from legislatures for what has been determined as unacceptable speech. Free speech and hate speech remain a vexed tangle in liberal politics world over. Maine Representative Laurel Libby has been barred from voting in the House. The Republican had posted a photo of a transgender student who won a girls' pole vault competition after finishing fifth in the boys' category two years earlier. She stands by her position and is seeking judicial intervention to restore her voting right. In UP, Abbas Ansari, an MLA of a party that is allied to the ruling BJP, has been expelled from the Legislative Assembly after he was convicted in a hate speech case from 2022. He had allegedly threatened the local administration during the Uttar Pradesh election. Simulating war and diplomacy Speaking of speech, there is a new status in fabricating information, which is honourably mentioned as 'narrative building,' in strategic commentaries these days. In love and war, all is fair, including lies. Misinformation has acquired such a halo of virtue. For all the frothing at the mouth about democracy being threatened by post-truth politics until recently, these days, strategists around the world are talking about the imperative of winning the 'narrative war' and poisoning the enemy's information pipelines! War itself is akin to a simulated computer game, as Ukraine's recent attack on Russian targets showed. It is only appropriate that there is also a voiceover of a suitable story to go with it. Many philosophers and thinkers have wondered whether we are living in a simulation. In the emerging landscape of virtual reality and AI, these questions are resurfacing. There are physicists who argue that a table made of wood and a table in VR are both equally real, or equally simulated. If we are already living in a simulated universe, we are creating a simulation within a simulation, as strategy! If what is perceived matters more, the reality as we thought of it until now, will cease to be relevant.
Hindustan Times
36 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
Trump administration asks Supreme Court to pause mass layoffs at Education Department
President Donald Trump's administration on Friday asked the Supreme Court to pause a court order to reinstate Education Department employees who were fired in mass layoffs as part of his plan to dismantle the agency. The Justice Department's emergency appeal to the high court said U.S. District Judge Myong Joun in Boston exceeded his authority last month when he issued a preliminary injunction reversing the layoffs of nearly 1,400 people and putting the broader plan on hold. Joun's order has blocked one of the Republican president's biggest campaign promises and effectively stalled the effort to wind down the department. A federal appeals court refused to put the order on hold while the administration appealed. The judge wrote that the layoffs 'will likely cripple the department.' But Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote on Friday that Joun was substituting his policy preferences for those of the Trump administration. The layoffs help put in the place the 'policy of streamlining the department and eliminating discretionary functions that, in the administration's view, are better left to the states,' Sauer wrote. He also pointed out that the Supreme Court in April voted 5-4 to block Joun's earlier order seeking to keep in place Education Department teacher-training grants. The current case involves two consolidated lawsuits that said Trump's plan amounted to an illegal closure of the Education Department. One suit was filed by the Somerville and Easthampton school districts in Massachusetts along with the American Federation of Teachers and other education groups. The other suit was filed by a coalition of 21 Democratic attorneys general. The suits argued that layoffs left the department unable to carry out responsibilities required by Congress, including duties to support special education, distribute financial aid and enforce civil rights laws. Trump has made it a priority to shut down the Education Department, though he has acknowledged that only Congress has the authority to do that. In the meantime, Trump issued a March order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to wind it down 'to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.' Trump later said the department's functions will be parceled to other agencies, suggesting that federal student loans should be managed by the Small Business Administration and programs involving students with disabilities would be absorbed by the Department of Health and Human Services. Those changes have not yet happened. The president argues that the Education Department has been overtaken by liberals and has failed to spur improvements to the nation's lagging academic scores. He has promised to 'return education to the states.' Opponents note that K-12 education is already mostly overseen by states and cities. Democrats have blasted the Trump administration's Education Department budget, which seeks a 15% budget cut including a $4.5 billion cut in K-12 funding as part of the agency's downsizing.
Mint
an hour ago
- Mint
Donald Trump administration pushes Supreme Court to scrap Department of Education, shifting control to states
Donald Trump's administration asked the US Supreme Court on Friday to permit it to proceed with dismantling the Department of Education, a move that would leave school policy in the United States almost entirely in the hands of states and local boards. The Justice Department asked the court to halt Boston-based U.S. District Judge Myong Joun's May 22 ruling that ordered the administration reinstate employees terminated in a mass layoff and end further actions to shutter the department. The department, created by a U.S. law passed by Congress in 1979, oversees about 100,000 public and 34,000 private schools in the United States, though more than 85% of public school funding comes from state and local governments. It provides federal grants for needy schools and programs, including money to pay teachers of children with special needs, fund arts programs and replace outdated infrastructure. It also oversees the $1.6 trillion in student loans held by tens of millions of Americans who cannot afford to pay for college outright. Trump's move to dismantle the department is part of the Republican president's campaign to downsize and reshape the federal government. Closing the department long has been a goal of many U.S. conservatives. Attorneys general from 20 states and the District of Columbia, as well as school districts and unions representing teachers, sued to block the Trump administration's efforts to gut the department. The states argued that the massive job cuts will render the agency unable to perform core functions authorized by statute, including in the civil rights arena, effectively usurping Congress's authority in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Trump on March 20 signed an executive order intended to effectively shut down the department, making good on a longstanding campaign promise to conservatives to move education policy almost completely to states and local boards. At a White House ceremony surrounded by children and educators, Trump called the order a first step "to eliminate" the department. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced plans on March 11 to carry out a mass termination of employees. Those layoffs would leave the department with 2,183 workers, down from 4,133 when Trump took office in January. The department said in a press release those terminations were part of its "final mission." Trump on March 21 announced plans to transfer the department's student loan portfolio to the Small Business Administration and its special education, nutrition and related services to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which also is facing deep job cuts. Joun in his ruling ordered the administration to reinstate the laid off workers and halt implementation of Trump's directive to transfer student loans and special needs programs to other federal agencies. The judge rejected the argument put forth by Justice Department lawyers that the mass terminations were aimed at making the department more efficient while fulfilling its mission. In fact, Joun ruled, the job cuts were an effort to shut down the department without the necessary approval of Congress. "This court cannot be asked to cover its eyes while the department's employees are continuously fired and units are transferred out until the department becomes a shell of itself," the judge wrote. White House spokesperson Harrison Fields called the judge's ruling "misguided." The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on June 4 rejected the Trump administration's request to pause the injunction issued by Joun.
