Lucknow, Oct. 16: Jai Gurudev cult leader Pankaj Baba went ahead with his scheduled congregation today, a day after a bridge stampede killed 24 people as tens of thousands of devotees headed to the venue from Varanasi city.

The Baba allowed two minutes' silence in honour of the dead before beginning his discourse, heard by two lakh followers, but ignored reporters' questions why the two-day mahasamagam had not been cancelled after such a tragedy on its first day.

Later, he told the media: "I agree that something went wrong, but it was the administration's failure. We cannot ask the followers of Jai Gurudev (the cult's founder) not to attend a programme organised in his memory."

A self-avowedly disgruntled member among the organisers, who asked not to be named, told The Telegraph the congregation was "simply a money-minting camp that Pankaj Baba couldn't afford to cancel even after the unfortunate deaths".

He said the venue hosted over 5,000 stalls of the Jai Gurudev Dharm Pracharak Sanstha, headed by Pankaj Baba, that did very good business.

"Over 65,000 jackets, each worth Rs 120 and bearing the name of Jai Gurudev, were sold along with 40,000 flags and 69,000 posters, each worth Rs 10, and more than 29,000 T-shirts, priced at Rs 100 each," he said over the phone. "Each devotee also donated Rs 100 to the trust."

Officials have blamed rumours and overcrowding for the stampede, saying permission had been given for a congregation of only 3,000 people but 3 lakh had turned up.

Today, a dozen officials of commissioner, inspector-general and district magistrate rank were deployed at the venue, Dumri village, to insure against a repeat tragedy.

Sources said the congregation was the first by the cult since Ram Briksh Yadav, Pankaj Baba's rival as the successor to Jai Gurudev, died with 27 followers in a gunfight with the police in Mathura in June that also killed two officers.

The violence, triggered by a bid to evict Ram Briksh and his followers from a public park they had occupied, had led to a slump in the number of Jai Gurudev followers.

"Cult members in eastern Uttar Pradesh considered Ram Briksh, who was from the region, as the true heir. The congregation was meant to establish Pankaj Baba's supremacy in the region," a source said.

"The rich among the cult members had been assigned to bring in people from Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha."

Pankaj Baba, said to be close to a senior Samajwadi Party leader, had reached Varanasi on Friday and supervised the arrangements in Dumri.

At his two-and-a-half hour sermon today, he said every human being "needs a guru to show them the light".

Chief minister Akhilesh Yadav today suspended Varanasi's additional district magistrate, Vindhyawasini Rai, and city magistrate Vijay Bahadur Singh for failing to take the "necessary steps to manage the crowd".