Manage Langalbandh bathing ritual like Biswa Ijtema

Rights defenders yesterday urged the government to manage the Hindu pilgrimage at Narayanganj's Langalbandh where several lakh people from home and abroad attend a bathing ritual every year, in the same manner it aids the Muslim gathering of Biswa Ijtema.

"We claim to be secular but secularism is proved in action not in words," said National Human Rights Commission Chairman Mizanur Rahman Khan, adding that he heard from a source that the government budget for this particular pilgrimage was only Tk 1.5 lakh.

Speaking as chief guest at a discussion on the March 27 stampede at Langalbandh, which killed 10 people and injured 20, the NHRC chief questioned that if government could monitor and aid the arrangement of Biswa Ijtema without flaws, why could it not do the same for Langalbandh?    

The programme was organised by environmental rights group Poribesh Bachao Andolon (Poba) at its office in the capital.

Pointing out negligence in duty by the local administration, Prof Mizanur quoted the minutes of a meeting at the upazila nirbahi officer's office, in which a decision to repair the bailey bridge and road that led to the pilgrimage site was taken on March 23, four days before the event, and the deadline was mistakenly written as May 25 in place of March 25.

"I am promising you that the National Human Rights Commission will not leave the local administration in peace if any acts of negligence come out in our investigation," he said.

Chairing the programme, Pankaj Bhattacharya, leader of Samillito Samajik Andolan, called on the government to form a national pilgrimage management committee to oversee the festivals.

Poba's report, based on a visit to the site on March 30, presented the conditions and problems of the 16 ghats used by Hindus, and the condition of the Brahmaputra River where they take the holy dip.

It showed how river grabbing, existence of illegal structures, a lack of dredging, dumping of solid and chemical waste, and negligence of the local administration in removing the water hyacinths have made the river unfit for navigation.

"So pilgrims are forced to use a one-way narrow road near Dhaka-Chittagong highway to reach the ghats," said Md Abdus Sobhan, Poba's executive general secretary.

M Shah Alam, member of the Law Commission, said the commission would prepare a report and recommend enforcement of laws to stop grabbing of endowment (debottor) property.

Bangladesh Puja Udjapon Parishad President Kajal Debnath said only about 2.5 acres out of the 46 acres of endowment property in Langalbandh was free now. "All other structures [on the rest of the land] are illegal."

Debnath also alleged that the rumour of a bridge collapse which triggered the stampede was initiated by land grabbers who wanted to stop this event so that they could grab the entire area.