DEHRADUN: Uttarakhand state forest department has identified 10 'rogue elephants' which will be fitted with radio collars and will be monitored 24x7 to prevent them from entering human populace, especially Kumbh 2021.
Budget approval of Rs 12 crore has been sought from the state government for the project.
Parag Nigam, a scientist from Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun who attended a meeting on the issue held on Monday said, "We have presentation to state government officials about possible solution. There were few points agreed upon to tackle the problem. We are waiting for further approval. (sic)"
These radio collars will be GPS fitted to get the real-time location of the pachyderms on mobile applications of forest officials from anywhere in the world.
The work is proposed to start on December 1, 2019, and to be completed in the same month.
The report prepared by the state forest department indicated that the situation of elephants treading into human settlements have become a problem, especially in Haridwar district.
Over 100 drones are said to be monitoring the congregation round the clock along with 1500 CCTVs.
Along with the drones, the police have also planned to make use of LCD screens and face recognition cameras to monitor crowds and traffic.
Routes for paddle rickshaw and auto-rickshaw will be separate to avoid traffic congestion at the site which is chosen to be at Shyampur bank of river Ganga in Haridwar.
More than 5 crore people are expected to attend the religious rituals in the Mahakumbh and take a dip in Holy Ganges, most revered river of Northern India.
The use of drones will help the police to monitor the ghats and manage the crowd of the devotees.
The state police is also planning to create social media accounts space on social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter to stay connected with the people directly.