Even as the anxious kin of the Prayagraj stampede victims waited for the bodies of their loved ones to arrive in Kolkata, the members of the Trinamool Congress Government on Thursday mounted fresh attack on the Yogi Adityanath administration for what they called "utter mismanagement" leading to the Wednesday's deaths.
Senior Bengal Minister Arup Biswas who had been liaisoning with the kin of the dead on behalf of the State Government asked the Uttar Pradesh Government to learn the art of controlling large crowds from the Mamata Banerjee administration.
"It is not only all about advertising a religious fair to earn money … it is also about taking care of the visitors and not treating them like livestock," Biswas said.
"They spent thousands of crore on a high tech system and will earn lakhs of crore from the highly publicized Kumbh Mela but now it all looks to be a system on paper the people who are returning are complaining of utter mismanagement," Biswas a senior Cabinet colleague of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said.
The minister who visited the house of Basanti Poddar - a middle aged woman from Kolkata's Aswhini Nagar - who died in the Wednesday's stampede complained how the dead bodies were being released with a plain piece of paper and no postmortem report and other formal documents.
"Don't they have any responsibility towards the victims who lost their lives after all the money spent by the lakhs of people who have been visiting the Kumbh Mela is going to the Government coffer, so they owe some duty towards the pilgrims like the way we do in Ganga Sagar Mela," the minister said.
Another senior leader Kunal Ghosh slammed the UP Government saying, "they should learn from the Bengal administration, how we managed the Ganga Sagar Mela, this year more than one crore people visited the fair … and consider that we do not get any funds from the
Centre … besides you have to cross a 3.5 km stretch of river on vessels to the mouth of Bay of Bengal … all these have to be meticulously planned and the entire thing is continuously monitored by our Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee … selling religion for earning money is not what you should do every time."
Incidentally in a circuitous remark Mamata Banerjee too had said on Wednesday that large fairs should be meticulously planned and organised. She wrote on the X, "I am deeply saddened to learn of the tragic stampede at the Maha Kumbh, which has claimed at least 15 innocent lives.
My thoughts and prayers are with the bereaved pilgrim families. My learning from our Ganga Sagar Mela is that planning and care must be maximal in matters relating to pilgrims' lives in vast assemblies of people. Prayers for the departed souls."
Two persons so far have been reportedly killed in the Wednesday's midnight stampede in Prayagraj. Apart from Basanti Poddar a middle aged woman from Aswhini Nagar, Urmila Mahato a septuagenarian woman too from Salboni in West Mdinapore too died in the stampede.
The victims' bodies had not yet reached Kolkata when reports last came in.