Rahul meets flyover collapse victims, BJP says 'photo-op'

Congress vice president says his visit is not political. Death toll mounts to 26.

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday visited the spot of the flyover collapse in Kolkata as the death toll in the tragedy mounted to 26 with one more body being recovered from the rubble.

Rahul said he had come to extend support to the victims and did not want to politicise the issue.

Later, he met the injured people in the CalcuttaMedicalCollege and Hospital.

“There has been a tragedy here. I have come here to give them whatever little support I can provide,” Rahul said after meeting the injured in the hospital.

When asked to comment on the allegations of lapses in the construction of the flyover, Rahul said, “I have come here to meet the injured. I’ll not talk about politics.”

Rahul, accompanied by state Congress President Adhir Chowdhury and party leader Deepa Dasmunsi, earlier talked to the National Disaster Response Force officials at the accident site.

An under-construction flyover collapsed in the city on Thursday.

Police had on Friday arrested three top officials of the Hyderabad based construction company which was building the flyover and slapped murder charges on them. PTI PNT PR

Meanwhile, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday took a swipe at Rahul over his visit to the site of the flyover collapse, calling it a ‘photo-op’ which is the ‘lifeline’ of the politics of the Congress vice president.

The party also asked him to explain his stand on the award of contract for building the flyover to an alleged blacklisted firm by the then Communist Party of India-Marxist government in West Bengal, questioning if the alliance between Congress and the Left there is based on the ‘foundation of corruption’.

“Rahul Gandhi is known for photo-ops. That is his politics. His political lifeline is photo-op,” BJP national secretary and West Bengal co-incharge Sidharth Nath Singh said reacting to the visit.

He also claimed that the BJP took a conscious decision that its Union ministers, who were in the state for electioneering, would not go to the spot so as to avoid hampering rescue operation and drew a comparison with demonstration by Congress workers there that, he alleged, hindered rescue work.

Singh said Rahul must answer if Congress exhibited responsibility with its demonstration on the spot on Friday.

On the other hand there were two senior ministers on the day ‘setugate’ happened, he said, adding that Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh monitored help by the NDRF and Army team. Another Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi was in Kolkata but did not go to the site of rescue operation.