BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia has said in an exclusive interview to NDTV that the Bengaluru stampede that happened during RCB’s IPL 2025 title celebrations on Wednesday ‘should have been planned better’. RCB’s IPL 2025 victory celebrations turned tragic as 11 people died and close to 50 were injured in a stampede outside the M Chinnaswamy Stadium. BCCI Secretary Devajit Saikia also felt that the event should’ve been organised in a better way.

“We feel there are serious lapses at some point of time in yesterday’s event. BCCI has an SOP from the beginning to the end of the tournament but we have no control and no role of monitoring on how the winners would celebrate. We are troubled that despite IPL having stringent protocols , but once they winner have reached back once the trophy is given its the responsibility of the franchise how they organise the celebrations. This is an eye opener for BCCI , we need to do some soul searching and we will have to speak to franchises as well,” Saikia said. 

Saikia further added that BCCI would review the post tournament celebrations as well, “We will have to take lessons at BCCI and also for the franchises. The celebrations from here on have to be done in a structured way.”

He also added that he felt that the time required to organise such a mega event was perhaps not enough in case of this celebrations.  

“We are pained and shocked because cricket fans have died in such an unfortunate way. BCCI has a long drawn SOP for holding tournament , matches where we have stringent protocol for crowd control. There is a detailed plan with BCCI to deal with emergency situation in any cricket match But after the tournament is over more so when it is IPL , it’s not more with BCCI to over see the celebrations. We have several examples on how BCCI have handled sea of humanities but it was incident free because we planned for days and followed a protocol. We are sure there were lapses in Bengaluru in organizing the celebrations. All the authorities should have coordinated and this could have been avoided,” Saikia further added.