Centre, UP indulge in blame game

New Delhi/Lucknow, Feb 1 (PTI) The Centre and UPgovernment today indulged in a blame game over the traintragedy and violence during an ITBP recruitment camp with HomeMinister P Chidambaram saying that minimum security wasprovided despite state police being informed well in advance.

The Uttar Pradesh government, however, claimed thatITBP and the Centre did not coordinate with the state on therecruitment camp and termed Chidambaram''s statement as"untrue" and "far from facts". It blamed alleged"mismanagement" of ITBP for the "chaos".

"The incident was unfortunate, but the ITBP did notinform the Bareilly administration that applications havebeen invited from 11 states," a UP government spokesman saidin Lucknow, adding the ITBP should have given a specialinformation in this regard.

He alleged that the ITBP failed to assess that such alarge number of applicants will turn up for the recruitmentdrive.

UP Special DGP Brij Lal said around 1.5 lakh jobaspirants turned up this morning. "A large number of aspirantswere called by the ITBP authorities but they did notcoordinate with the local administration. This led to chaos,"he said, adding adequate PAC and police were deployed torestore calm.

In a statement, the ITBP said the force''s DIG atBareilly had duly informed the District Magistrate on January17 about the recruitment drive.

Chidambaram said the state police was obliged toprovide security to any kind of recruitment camp and such aprogramme is not held without the knowledge of the statepolice.

"These were done with the full knowledge and consentof state police," he said in New Delhi.

15 youths were killed and several others injured whenthey fell from the roof of two speeding trains crammed withjob aspirants returning from the ITBP recruitment camp inBareilly. The incidents triggered violent protests as angryyouths torched a train.

Earlier in the day, thousands of ITBP aspirants wenton a rampage in Bareilly torching a number of vehicles afterthey failed to submit their forms . They set ablaze sevenbuses, five of them belonging to the state roadways, sometwo-wheelers and a petrol pump, officials said.