Janata Dal (S) working president S.R. Mahesh has urged the State government to withdraw the suspension of senior police officials, in the wake of the stampede outside the Chinnaswamy stadium in Bengaluru recently.Mr. Mahesh demanded a probe by a central agency.Addressing a press conference here on Friday, Mr. Mahesh questioned the State government’s decision to make the police officials ‘sacrificial lambs’ for the collective ‘negligence’ of legislatures and executives.He said it was not fair to punish the police officials, including Commissioner of Bengaluru City Police B. Dayananda, who had worked tirelessly till 4 a.m. the next morning.Mr. Mahesh raised questions over the role of Intelligence Department Chief Hemanth Nimbalkar, the Home Secretary, and Chief Secretary in the circumstances that led to the stampede on Wednesday.“What was the Intelligence chief doing? Did he give a report? Were the two programmes (one in front of Vidhana Soudha and the other at Chinnaswamy stadium) held even after he gave the report? What was the Home Secretary doing? What the Chief Secretary doing?”, he asked.Mr. Siddaramaiah, who heads the Intelligence Department, was accountable for the lapses, he said.Mr. Mahesh claimed that the decision to hold the celebrations without organising a preliminary meeting on the preparations was an ‘administrative failure’ of the Congress government.Suggesting that there should have been sufficient time of about a week between the victory and celebration, Mr. Mahesh said the government should have held a meeting on the preparations with Leaders of the Opposition. “Instead, the ruling party tried to project the victory of RCB as a victory of the government,” he said.He also questioned the presence of Mr. Siddaramaiah’s family members at the felicitation ceremony in front of Vidhana Soudha.The JD(S) leader criticised the presence of Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot at the function organised to felicitate the RCB players in front of Vidhana Soudha. “I urge the Centre to recall the Governor as he also participated in the felicitation function,” he said.Mr. Mahesh said, “A central agency should conduct an inquiry into the matter.” He came down on the IPL cricket league by claiming that a large number of youths had taken to betting in rural areas.Published - June 06, 2025 07:59 pm IST