Poor Coordination, Massive Turnout, Lack Of Planning, Check What Led to RCB Victory Parade Stampede?

On Wednesday, a stampede during the IPL-2025 celebrations of Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) resulted in 11 deaths, and 33 other people injuries, outside Chinnaswamy Stadium. The event clearly displayed egregious violations of crowd management and event management principles.

Unprecedented Crowd Exceeds the Capacity of the Stadium

The stampede occurred when an unprecedented 2-3 lakh fans came to Chinnaswamy Stadium to celebrate RCB's first IPL 2025 title win with an expected capacity of 35,000. An exasperated Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, explained the police did not anticipate that many people, "No one expected such a huge crowd. We deployed the whole city police,". 

The stampede occurred around 3:35 PM near Gate 20 when fidgety fans had waited more than an hour, were growing increasingly restless and rather didn't want to wait to enter through the gates, which were partially open, they entered. 

Eyewitnesses suggest that there were only 3 policemen and a few guards monitoring the gates along with how many had shown up at the gates.

Severe Planning and Coordination Failures

Speaking with NDTV, BCCI Secretary, Devajit Saikia said there were "definitely some lapses", adding that such events "cannot be done in a hurry". The lack of the control measures we saw when ambulances could not even get in at the gates because of totally congested roads promised to display the severity of the planning deficiencies.

Among the deceased is an 18-year college student Manoj Kumar whose father sold pani puri, and a 14-year old schoolgirl Divyanshi. RCB was advised and subsequently canceled the celebratory program, a mere 5 to 10 minutes after starting.

Government Response and Accountability

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah asserts the government takes some responsibility, and pointed to the lay of the land as "the size of the disaster", and hinted it happens at events like Kumbh Mela in which "50, 60 people died". The government announced a judicial inquiry and set it at 15 days, and gave Rs 10 lakhs for the families of the deceased as well as made headlines.

Outrage was directed at Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar for allegedly taking selfies in the pandemonium.

The RCB Victory Parade Stampede is a heart-wrenching crowd management failure that turned a celebration event into catastrophic chaos, and demonstrates the need for better planned protocols and event capacity.