LUCKNOW: With barely nine days left for the Mahakumbh to get over on February 26, a relentless stream of devotees continues to throng the Sangam in Prayagraj for a holy dip.
With reports of massive traffic jams on all the highways approaching Prayagraj, pilgrims arriving in four-wheelers are now parking the vehicles in adjoining districts and taking the train route to reach the railway station nearest to Sangam. As per senior police officials, the devotees are parking their vehicles at Kanpur, Fatehpur, Etawah, Mirzapur, Rewa (in Madhya Pradesh) and Pratapgrah while catching trains for the onward journey.
However, while the new trend has brought some respite to those managing the traffic in and around Prayagraj, it has brought the authorities at railway stations under immense pressure in the Sangam city especially after the the stampede at the Delhi railway station, which resulted in the loss of 18 lives leaving scores injured.
Meanwhile, in the wake of the Delhi railway station mishap, almost all the railway stations in UP, witnessing massive surge in the number of devotes scrambling to reach Prayagraj, have been put on high alert to avert any untoward incident.
According to ACP (Kotwali) Manoj Kumar Singh of Prayagraj, acknowledging the unprecedented rush of devotees at railway stations, cops came to know that devotees, particularly those who started their journey from distant states like Gujarat, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Punjab, etc., parked their vehicles in districts around Prayagraj to avoid highway jams and are opting for small train routes pursuing the onward journey.
“While parking slots at entry points for vehicles with registration numbers of other states and districts have been identified, the devotees are using the parking slots of nearby railway stations to catch mela special trains for Prayagraj and avoid entry point chaos,” he added.
However, despite the latest trend being followed by devotees from other states, Prayagraj railway station is overcrowded due to the heavy influx of pilgrims.
“The volume of the crowd has increased manifold at Prayagraj railway junction in the past four days as more devotees are preferring to catch trains to return to their native towns,” said the ACP adding district police were implementing four crowd control schemes to ensure the safety and security of devotees.
As per DCP (City) Abhishek Bharti, strict surveillance on entry and exit routes is being maintained with additional police teams deployed at static points.