Nitish Kumar should resign over Chhath stampede on moral ground, says Lalu Yadav

The Opposition in Bihar on Tuesday made a scathing attack on Nitish Kumar government for the death of 17 people in a stampede during Chhath festival with RJD president Lalu Prasad demanding that the chief minister should resign on moral ground.

"Nitish should tender resignation on moral ground in the wake of this vast human tragedy on the occasion of Chhath... If he fails to do so God will punish him," Prasad said.

Stating that "adminstrative failure" was responsible for Monday's tragedy, Prasad, who airdashed here this afternoon, demanded that a case be registered under section 302 (murder) of IPC against officials responsible for the construction of the makeshift Chhachri bridge that caved in at the ghat triggering the stampede.

The RJD chief announced Rs50,000 each from the party fund for those killed in the incident and later met families of the victims, 10 of whom were women and children.

On the chief minister's appeal that politics should be kept out of human tragedy, Prasad, a known bete noire of Kumar, said, "How can we remain silent on such a big incident... Responsibility has to be fixed for the incident."

Other Opposition parties like Congress, LJP, NCP and Left too hit out at the government over the tragedy.