Thousands died in stampede at Kumbh: Mallikarjun Kharge sparks row

“What message are you sending? I appeal to your good sense,” he told Kharge.

Participating in a debate on the Motion of Thanks to the President’s address, Kharge paid homage to “thousands of people who have died in Maha Kumbh”. When the Treasury side objected, he said, “If this is wrong, you tell… this is my guess. If this is not true you tell the truth.”

Union Minister Piyush Goyal called Kharge’s remarks on the deaths, and another on farmers’ suicide, “baseless, false and misleading… ”

“When Jawaharlal Nehru was Prime Minister, 800 people died in a stampede on Mauni Amavasya in 1954. In 1986, during the tenure of Rajiv Gandhi, 200 people died during the Kumbh Mela. Then their Chief Minister Veer Bahadur Singh went to Kumbh with other chief ministers and 200 people died due to VIP movement. They (Congress) should answer that,” said Goyal.

He added that 42 people died in Prayagraj in 2013 “when eight crore people” visited the area.

Dhankhar said, “Mallikarjun Kharge, one of the senior-most political leaders in the country, … made an observation with respect to an incident that took place when we were having Maha Kumbh after a period of 144 years. Everyone who has belief in the nation, its civilisational ethos would be shell shocked when the Leader of the Opposition said thousands have been killed — an outlandish, outrageous, unacceptable…”

He added: “We cannot have a statement made in this House to generate sensation, to hurt feelings, to generate chaos in the country… This is not a place for freefall of information…. I, therefore, call upon the Leader of Opposition to substantiate the premise of his statement that in that mishap thousands had lost their lives.”

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said: “Can Leader of Opposition substantiate by putting on record or on what basis he has made these claims — lakhs of farmers have died. Same as he misled by claiming that thousands of people have died in Kumbh… We expect the Leader of Opposition to substantiate this particular statement.”