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Time of India
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Brahmins: BJP govt is opposed to ‘tilak', targeting Brahmins: Akhilesh
Lucknow: Slamming the BJP govt for 'systematically targeting Brahmins', chief on Wednesday said the present dispensation was opposed to 'Tilak' (worn by Brahmins on their forehead). Tired of too many ads? go ad free now "The Brahmin community has always played the important role of leading the society. It gives direction to society. The Brahmin community's contribution in every field is unforgettable. Samajwadi Party has always honoured and respected the Brahmin community which in turn has extended guidance to the party. Their support and cooperation will ensure our victory in 2027 assembly polls ," Akhilesh said at a conference of Brahmins organised by the party in Lucknow. Prior to addressing the conference, Akhilesh explained that the meet was called before Operation Sindoor started, suggesting that the party would have deferred the event had it been aware of the defence operation. At the conference, which was presided over by party veteran and Leader of Opposition (LoP) in UP assembly, Mata Prasad Pandey, former SP minister Pawan Pandey accused the BJP govt of extending step-motherly treatment to Brahmin community. Pawan listed out names and instances where Brahmins found themselves at the receiving end because of police high handedness and incidents of crime. SP functionary and party's Lucknow candidate in 2022 Assembly polls Puja Shukla was among a host of Brahmin leaders of the party present at the event. Citing another instance of how the BJP govt was blatantly undermining the Brahmins, Pandey cited an instance when late Mulayam Singh Yadav was the chief minister of UP. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now "He had invited Brahmin intellectuals for a meeting where everyone demanded that Lord Parshuram's Jayanti (observed on April 29) should be declared as a holiday. Netaji agreed. But the present BJP govt cancelled the holiday. The SP which had coined PDA — Pichrde (Backward classes), Dalits and Alpsankhyaks (Minorities) — in the run up to the 2024 Lok Sabha polls had included Brahmins too in the acronym saying that 'A' in PDA included Agrde (Upper castes). After Akhilesh won the LS election from Kannauj, he was replaced as the leader of opposition in the state assembly with party veteran Mata Prasad Pandey, a Brahmin.
Yahoo
29-01-2025
- Yahoo
Crowd chaos and confusion at site of India festival stampede
Journeying across India for the pinnacle celebration of the Hindu calendar, Laxmi and her family were sleeping by the roadside Wednesday as they waited to cleanse themselves in the sacred Ganges river. All of a sudden they were violently roused in the middle of the night by police officers, who smacked them with wooden sticks and ordered them to clear a path for other pilgrims. The officers were frantically trying to make way for a surging throng of devotees that would imminently spill over crowd control barriers and crush the dozing masses on the other side. "A large crowd surged forward, pushing and trampling us," Laxmi, shell-shocked and huddled under a thick woollen shawl in the morning cold, told AFP. "In that chaos, my sister-in-law lost her life." Laxmi is among millions of people who flocked to the northern city of Prayagraj for the Kumbh Mela, a six-week festival of worship and ritual bathing meant to cleanse the faithful of sin. Wednesday marks one of the holiest days in the festival, coinciding with an alignment of planets in the solar system, when saffron-clad holy men lead crowds into the water at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers. But the Kumbh Mela has a woeful safety record and celebrations have once again been overshadowed by a stampede, this time fatally crushing at least 15 pilgrims. Even before the latest incident, the festival's attendees fumed over what they said was poor crowd management. "If we talk about the worst organized Kumbh Mela in history it will be 2025," Mata Prasad Pandey, a 65-year-old retired teacher, told AFP. Pandey complained that he had been forced to walk more than 25 kilometres (15 miles) to and from the festival site because of onerous restrictions on vehicle traffic by organisers. "Elderly people and women are forced to walk for ages," he added. Reserved pathways and cordoned-off areas reserved for eminent attendees have been a source of vehement complaint at the festival for reducing the amount of space for common pilgrims. Several videos shared widely on social media before the stampede showed crowds shouting at police officers for preventing them from moving about the festival grounds on foot, while they gave priority travel to distinguished guests in cars. Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi condemned organisers for "mismanagement" and a "focus on VIP movement" which he blamed for the deaths. Others, including Prayagraj local Rekha Verma, pointed the finger at heavy-handed tactics by "rude and abusive" police officers to keep immense throngs of devotees in line. "Police are using force to control the crowd and that's why this happened," she said. - 'They have failed' - But on the ground it was unclear how much power police had to keep order, with the Uttar Pradesh state government estimating tens of millions of people scattered around the festival site. Even after news of the stampede spread, a mass of people slid under gates and jumped fences to move towards the riverbed, shrugging off aggressive orders from officers to turn back. Others felt uncomfortable staying at the festival, despite the long and arduous journey. "We walked all over the night to reach out the bathing spot, but now I don't think it's safe to go there," pilgrim Nirmala Devi told AFP. "We have children and elderly people with us," she said. "We are headed back home, safety is important." Organisers have been eager to tout the technological advancements introduced for this year's edition of the Kumbh Mela. That includes an extensive artificial intelligence-assisted surveillance system meant to give advance warning of dangerous crowd crushes. "The government said again and again on TV that the arrangements it had made were sufficient but we now see that they have failed," university student Ruchi Bharti told AFP. "If you see advertisements it seems like the government is providing world-class facilities," he said. "But this stampede proved that was all a lie." dm/gle/dhw
