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LUCKNOW, India: At least five devotees died and 40 others were injured Tuesday after a wooden platform collapsed during a religious gathering in northern India, an official said.

The incident happened in Baghpat district, north of the capital New Delhi, where hundreds of devotees from the Jain faith had gathered at a temple to make offerings of confectionery.

“A wooden structure collapsed resulting in the death of five people,” district magistrate Asmita Lal told AFP.

“Forty others were injured, out of which 20 have been sent home after first aid,” she added.

The platform is erected every year during the festival to mark the salvation of the Jain deity Adinatha, NDTV news network reported.

“The priests went to offer laddoos (sweets) and the platform collapsed, along with hundreds of devotees on it,” Rakesh Jain, one of the devotees, told the broadcaster.

Deadly accidents are common at places of worship in India during major religious festivals due to poor crowd management and safety lapses.

Last year, 121 people were killed in Uttar Pradesh state during a stampede at the end of a religious sermon.

Another 112 people died in 2016 after a huge explosion caused by a banned fireworks display marking the Hindu new year at a temple in southern Kerala state.

Tuesday’s accident comes as millions of devotees participate in the Kumbh Mela, a Hindu festival of prayer and ritual bathing being held at the nearby city of Prayagraj.

Jainism is an ancient Indian religion — followed by less than one percent of India’s 1.25 billion people — that preaches non-violence, strict vegetarianism and love for all creatures great and small.

NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s closest political ally has pledged to rid the capital of “illegal’ immigrants if his party wins looming elections, in a forceful appeal to his party’s Hindu constituency.
Interior minister Amit Shah said every unlawful migrant from neighboring Bangladesh would be expelled from New Delhi “within two years” if his party succeeded in next month’s provincial polls.
“The current state government is giving space to illegal Bangladeshis and Rohingyas,” Shah told an audience of several thousand at Sunday’s rally.
“Change the government and we will rid Delhi of all illegals.”
India shares a porous border stretching thousands of kilometers with Muslim-majority Bangladesh, and illegal migration from its eastern neighbor has been a hot-button political issue for decades.
There are no reliable estimates of the number of Bangladeshis living illegally in Delhi, a city to which millions have flocked in search of employment from elsewhere in India over recent decades.
Critics of Modi and Shah’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) accuse the party of using the issue as a dog whistle against Muslims to galvanize its Hindu-nationalist support base during elections.
Delhi, a sprawling megacity home to more than 30 million people, has been governed for most of the past decade by charismatic chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
Kejriwal rode to power as an anti-corruption crusader a decade ago and his profile has bestowed upon him the mantle of one of the chief rivals to Modi and Shah’s party.
His popularity has been burnished by extensive water and electricity subsidies for the capital’s millions of poorer residents.
But he spent several months behind bars last year on accusations his party took kickbacks in exchange for liquor licenses, along with several fellow party leaders.
Kejriwal denies wrongdoing and characterised the charges as a political witch-hunt by Modi’s government, and despite resigning as chief minister last year vowed to return to the office if his party won re-election.
The BJP has led a spirited campaign in its efforts to dislodge Kejriwal’s party ahead of the February 5 vote.
Modi is expected to make a pilgrimage to the ongoing Kumbh Mela, the biggest festival on the Hindu calendar, to bathe in the sacred Ganges river on the day of the Delhi assembly vote.
Results of the election will be published on February 8.