Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav has raised concerns over the alleged disappearance of approximately 1,000 Hindu devotees who attended the Maha Kumbh in Prayagraj. The SP leader urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to address this issue when discussing the event’s success in the Lok Sabha.
“1000 Hindus are missing from the Kumbh whose whereabouts are not known. The BJP should provide information on the 1000 people who are missing,” SP leader Yadav said outside the Parliament.
Akhilesh Yadav’s remarks followed PM Modi’s statement on the Maha Kumbh‘s role in fostering national unity and demonstrating India’s capability to host large gatherings.
However, Akhilesh Yadav emphasized that the government should focus on locating the missing individuals and provide clarity on the budget allocated for the event.
“The government should find the Hindu brethren who are missing and unite them with their families. People put up posters of missing people and the government is even getting those removed,” Yadav said.
PM Modi should have talked about finding those people, he said.
The BJP and its people should help the families of those who lost their loved ones in the Mahakumbh, the former UP chief minister said.
Akhilesh Yadav said the biggest question is what was the budget allocated by the government of India for the Mahakumbh.
“Can anyone imagine that the chief ministers of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh were just deciding where the vehicles will be parked. There were a number of IPS officials who were stopping people from going for the ‘snan’, saying that they do not have the capacity to facilitate them,” he told reporters in Parliament House premises.
“People were being stopped at the borders. The Centre would have given a budget for the Maha Kumbh to the state (Uttar Pradesh) government — that should be mentioned. At a time when pages of history are being turned, the biggest loss of lives has been of Hindu devotees,” he said.
In his remarks, Modi said, “We witnessed the enthusiasm and excitement of the Mahakumbh in India for about one and a half months. The way millions of devotees came together with devotion, rising above the concerns of convenience and inconvenience, is our greatest strength.”
“The nectar of unity is the most sacred offering of the Mahakumbh,” he said.
“The Maha Kumbh was such an event in which people from every region and every corner of the country came together. People put aside their egos and gathered in Prayagraj with the feeling of ‘we’ and not ‘I’,” he added.