#MahaKumbh# Yogi Aditynath# Opposition# Prayagraj# Akhilesh Yadav# Narendra Modi# Mamata Banerjee
Lucknow/IBNS-CMEDIA: Days ahead of the grand finale of Maha Kumbh, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath launched a scathing attack on critics with a barbed speech at the state assembly.
He said Kumbh was the repository where people found whatever they sought.
“Vultures got dead bodies. Pigs got filth… whereas sensitive people got a beautiful picture of relationships, traders got business, devotees got clean arrangements,” he said.
The attack was to the Opposition, who have been vociferous with their criticisms, especially after the stampede that killed 18 people and injured multiple others.
“You (opposition) said that a particular caste was stopped from going there. No caste was stopped. Anybody with good intentions should go to Kumbh with respect, but whoever goes there with ill intentions will suffer if he tries to create chaos in Kumbh,” Adityanath said.
Targetting Samajwadi Party supremo Akhilesh Yadav, he said: “We have not played with faith like you. In your time, the chief minister did not have time to see and review the event and therefore he appointed a non-Sanatani as the in-charge of Kumbh.”
“But here I myself was reviewing Kumbh and am still doing it. This is the reason that whoever went to the Kumbh in 2013 saw chaos, corruption, and pollution. There was no water fit for bathing in the Triveni of Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati. The prime minister of Mauritius is an example of this who refused to take a bath,” he said.
Starting with the stampede earlier this month that left 18 dead based on reports of fecal content in the Sangam waters, the Opposition has attacked the government in connection with the Maha Kumbh.
Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge triggered uproar in the Parliament as he paid “tributes to the thousands who died in Kumbh.”
Samajwadi Party leader Jaya Bachchan claimed the bodies of the Mahakumbh stampede victims were “being thrown into the river”.
Days later, Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee sparked a fresh row, as she referred to the massive religious gathering as “Mrityu Kumbh” citing deaths caused by stampedes.
“It has turned into a Mrityu Kumbh,” she was quoted as saying by the media. “There was no planning at all. So many people died this time.”
While BJP leaders from the Centre and quite obviously Bengal strongly condemned her comments claiming to be hurtful to the religious sentiments, Shankaracharya Swami Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati Maharaj alleged the Maha Kumbh organisers did not follow proper crowd management processes.
“… There was a traffic jam of 300 kilometres. If this is not mismanagement, then what is it? People had to walk 25-30 km with their luggage… The water coming for bathing is mixed with sewage water and the scientists don’t consider it fit for bathing, yet you are forcing crores of people to bathe in it,” Swami Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati, popularly known as Jagadguru, told news agency ANI.
“… Your job was to either stop the drains for a few days or divert them so that people could get pure water while bathing… You knew 12 years ago that the Maha Kumbh would come after 12 years, why did you not make any effort in this regard?” he said
Samajwadi Party chief and former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav also attacked the government over the scale and expenditure of the Maha Kumbh.
The Maha Kumbh or the Great Pitcher Festival is the largest religious congregation in the world.
It will continue till February 26.
At least 30 people died in a stampede incident in the ongoing Maha Kumbh in the north Indian city of Prayagraj last month.
In another incident, at least 18 people died and scores of others were injured in a deadly stampede that occurred at New Delhi Railway Station where hundreds of people had assembled on platforms 14 and 15 to board trains for Prayagraj.
