The mega rally of the National Democratic Alliance partners of Telugu Desam Party, Jana Sena Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party at Chilakaluripet in Andhra Pradesh on Sunday evening has witnessed utter chaos, poor crowd management and lack of proper organisation.
The entire organisation of the rally was handled by TDP general secretary Nara Lokesh, son of party president N Chandrababu Naidu.
He formed as many as 13 committees with representatives of all three alliance partners, but they failed to ensure proper arrangements for such a massive rally.
The organisers should have taken enough care in making arrangements at the rally, especially because it was being addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
But there were incidents of security breach at a couple of places, climbing of party workers on electric poles and towers holding flood lights and surging of crowds towards the microphone control panel.
As a result, Modi himself had to pick up the mike and appeal to the people to calm down, get down from towers and requesting them not to fall on the microphone control panel.
His speech was disrupted at least for four times due to snapping of wire connections because of the indiscipline crowds.
Apparently, the crowds pushed their way into the VVIP and VIP galleries and even the media galleries. There was utter lawlessness at the meeting.
Now, the question is who is responsible for this entire chaos? The TDP-Jana Sena-BJP leaders are trying to throw the blame on the police machinery, saying the police had miserably failed to provide security to the PM meeting and control the crowds.
According to a TDP leader, when chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy comes to any place to address a public meeting, thousands of police people make a big hungama, close all the routes leading to the venue, shut down the shops and business establishments and divert the traffic. Even at the CM’s meeting, the police would be seen everywhere.
“But in Modi’s meeting, the police were nowhere to be seen, let alone controlling the traffic. At the venue, there were hardly any police personnel and those present in small numbers were not enough to control the crowds. Even when Modi was appealing to the police to see that the crowds came down from electric towers, the police did not act in time,” the TDP leader said.
But the party people, too, cannot get away by throwing the blame on to the police. Generally, the TDP deploys large number of volunteers at Naidu’s meetings to regulate the crowds and make proper arrangements. But this time, they haven’t done this at all.
“It is the responsibility of the TDP leaders to see that sufficient police personnel are deployed. But they focussed more crowd mobilisation, rather than ensuring adequate security measures for the meeting,” a source said.
