Sidda & DKS To Meet Rahul Gandhi Over Bengaluru Stampede On June 10

Nearly a week after Bengaluru’s stampede (June 4) that killed 11 people, the Congress high command seems to have finally got into the act. It has summoned both Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah and Deputy CM DK Shivakumar to Delhi to meet Rahul Gandhi on June 10. It is good that the Congress leadership has stepped in as the stampede itself was widely seen as a game of one-upmanship by state leaders. DKS was at the forefront trying to hijack the IPL victory to further his own politics. The worst part was the manner in which Siddaramaiah tried to politically shift the entire blame on Shivakumar aspiring to oust him in November and administratively pinned the blame on the city police. Bengaluru police had declined permission to hold the victory parade for the Royal Challengers team that had won the IPL cup at a short notice. But phone calls from senior ministers, particularly Shivakumar, forced police officials to give go ahead for the event. Shivakumar took complete ownership of the IPL victory in such a way that he packaged it as a campaign to make him CM. When Siddaramaiah’s close aides led by K Govindaraj heard of this they decided that the Governor, the CM and other ministers should preside over a reception for the RCB team outside the Vidhana Soudha. This led the police to prioritise the Soudha event, resulting in a lesser number of policemen available for the Stadium event where more than two lakh people had gathered. Many of them were supporters of DKS who had come from his home turf of Kanakapura. It is learnt that when the stampede happened Siddaramaiah was out with his grandchildren having dosas. To fix DKS, Siddaramaiah fired his political secretary, Govindaraj three days after the stampede.