Varanasi: Congress leader Sheila Dikshit today said being a Member of Parliament from Varanasi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi should visit the city and meet the victims of stampede incident in which 25 people have lost their lives.
She also demanded that the compensation for the stampede victims should be raised from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 10 lakh.
“Prime Minister Narendra Modi should come and meet the victims as he is an MP from this holy city,” Dikshit said, who along with Uttar Pradesh Congress chief Raj Babbar today met the stampede victims at the BHU’s Trauma centre here.
She also asked leaders of all the parties not to politicise the incident and demanded that the central and the state governments should come out with some mechanism to prevent such incidents from happening in the future.
Such kind of incidents should not occur anywhere in the country, the government should form a special police force to deal with the crowd management in the cities, she said.
“Though there was a lapse in traffic arrangement by police, but merely suspending and transferring officials was not the only solution, instead the state government should come out with a mechanism wherein such kind incident may not get repeated,” said Dikshit, who is Congress chief ministerial candidate for 2017 Assembly polls.
Diskhit and Babbar, while speaking to reporters after the visit, asked the state government to ensure the safety of every individual visiting the city which is a major tourist and pilgrim destination, and people not only from within the country but also from abroad also come here.
To a question on BJP raising the issue of construction of Ramayan Museum in Ayodhya ahead of 2017 UP Assembly elections, she said, “Ram is our God. The saffron party must stop communalising and giving a religious colour to the issue. It was not the right to use God to gain political mileage.”
Dikshit and Babbar condoled the loss of lives in the stampede incident.
–PTI