Then & Now: The cattle trap on the southern end of Gandhi Maidan a day after the stampede and (right) after it was covered on Monday night. Picture by Ranjeet Kumar Dey

The first step has been taken towards making Gandhi Maidan people-friendly with the cattle trap on its southern gate being removed.

This trap had turned out to be a hurdle when revellers on the Dussehra day were trying to come out of the Maidan when a stampede claimed 33 lives.

The inquiry committee, comprising principal secretary (home) Amir Subhani and additional director-general of police (headquarters) Gupteshwar Pandey, had mentioned in its report submitted on November 29 that the bad condition of cattle trap was one of the reasons of the stampede.

After the stampede, the Gandhi Maidan Committee headed by Patna divisional commissioner Narmadeshwar Lal issued several directives for maintenance and upkeep of the ground and appointed the building construction department as its nodal agency to carry out the work.

With regard to this, the cattle trap outside the Gandhi Maidan near Ramgoolam Chowk was removed on Monday night and the removal of second cattle trap at northeast direction was going on. There were two cattle traps in the ground and the order of the removal was given by a committee, which also includes Patna district magistrate Abhay Kumar Singh.

Narmadeshwar said: “I had given the direction to remove all the cattle traps from the ground as there was no need of it. It was not restricted to removal but to fill up the portion so the visitors should not face any problem.”

Most of the reasons leading to the accident were result of administrative failure. The Patna district administration, the Patna district police, Patna traffic police and Patna Municipal Corporation were held responsible by the committee.

The committee, in its report, had mentioned that there was an unattended cable wire near the maidan’s southern gate leading towards Ramgoolam Chowk. People panicked, leading to the stampede, as a rumour spread that it was a live wire. The cattle trap in front of the gate was in a bad shape, too, on which the people tripped and fell. Narmadeshwar added: “This was just the first step to make the ground people-friendly. We have also decided to hire a private agency for security, maintenance and beautification of the ground. The agency would soon be selected through tender. A plan of jogging track parallel to the existing one is also there. These are steps being taken apart from the earlier work given to the building construction department.”

Construction of watchtowers and widening of the present gate of Gandhi Maidan are two major works carried out by the building construction department. There are total nine gates and building construction department have been assigned the work to construct watchtowers near every gate for proper monitoring and widening the gates from 16ft to 25ft, including construction of 6ft side gate. A senior official of building construction department said: “Soon, we will start construction of watchtowers and work of widening the gate would also begin by next month.”

For crowd management, the committee already decided that the ground would be divided into four parts and the division would be made using barricades so that people of one section could not enter other sections.