Remembering Those Poor Souls

Rajahmundry: It has been a year since 29 innocent lives fell victim to Chandrababu's craze for publicity. As CM Chandrababu Naidu and his family decided to visit general pushkar ghat instead of VIP ghat to get good footage with more number of people for the video being made on pushkarams, a huge number of people were made to wait for a long time, making them restless and resulting in a stampede after the gates were opened for them at once. 29 people dies in the stampede for no fault of theirs.

Now with arrangements going on for Godavari river's anthya pushkarams and Krishna river's pushkarams, it has to be noted that inquiry on the fateful event has still seen no progress. In spite of everybody's knowing Chandrababu was responsible for the incident, no action has been taken.

No progress in the inquiry

Three months after people's organisations fought and demanded for probe on the incident, the Government formed an inquiry committee on the 15th of  September 2015 called 'Justice CY Somayajulu Commission'. But the commission has still not identified the responsible people for the incident. East Godavari district collector reported at that time to the president of India and the National Human Rights' Commission that AP CM Chandrababu Naidu and other VIPs had spent more than one hour in the pushkar ghat and that had resulted in the stampede. But changes were made to the report due to the Government's pressure. A second report was sent citing that the devotees' eagerness to bathe first resulted in the incident. People's organisations demand to know the reason behind the mutually irrelevant reports.

In spite of proofs being there..

The opposition is showing evidence for Chandrababu's sacrificing the lives of 29 devotees by giving contract to a private TV channel to film pushkarams in order to bring the religious event international publicity. People's organisations complain that the Government has deliberately made the CC TV footage disappear.