LUCKNOW: After the completion of Maghi Purnima Snan, a significant milestone in the Mahakumbh marking the end of Kalpwaas, a fresh wave of pilgrims spilling over from the Mahakumbh are moving to Kashi, the land of Lord Shiva, ahead of Mahashivratri.
The crowd has swollen so much that the localities in the vicinity of Kashi Vishwanath Dham were choc-o-bloc, sending the authorities into a tizzy on Thursday.
The police, struggling hard with crowd management, were under immense pressure in regulating the spillover crowd from the Mahakumbh and the followers of Sant Ravidas, coupled with the hustle and bustle of the wedding season at its peak.
The police administration was seen diverting vehicles at the outskirts of Varanasi, bringing pilgrims from Prayagraj and other highways to the parking zones. Meanwhile, inside the city, the men in khaki could be seen sweating as they regulated both the pilgrims moving on foot and vehicles on the roads approaching Kashi Vishwanath Dham, as well as the railway stations, parking zones, and bus stands.
As per local sources, queues measuring up to five kilometers were seen in and around Kashi Vishwanath Dham, which was a complete no-vehicle zone, for pilgrims seeking darshan of the revered shrine of Lord Shiva. “It is a challenge to manage the crowd waiting to enter the temple area and also ensure the evacuation of the pilgrims coming out of the temple after taking darshan,” said a senior police official.
However, in the core zone witnessing maximum crowding at Godowlia Crossing, the men in khaki were using aerial surveillance with military-standard tethered drones equipped with night vision capabilities, which can be positioned for up to 12 hours at a stretch.
Additional Commissioner of Police, Kashi Zone, T. Sarvanan, said that the drones were being used to determine crowd flow patterns, monitor suspicious activities, and identify unattended items.
Micro drones were also being used for aerial surveillance to identify crowded points, ghat areas, overloading of boats, and non-compliance with security directions given to boat operators, he said.
“We are also utilizing geo-spatial technologies for parking and traffic diversion plans, gyroscopic self-balancing e-scooters for crowd management, and a Face Recognition System (FRS) to act on terrorism-related input and also detect missing persons in crowded areas,” he said, adding that live traffic monitoring was also being done through 2,576 state-of-the-art cameras at the integrated command and control center. State-of-the-art rescue boats and life-saving accessories were also being used for riverine rescue operations.
Varanasi Divisional Commissioner Kaushal Raj Sharma, along with other senior officers of the district administration, is inspecting localities and areas along the ghats to ensure no inconvenience is caused to the pilgrims congregating to offer prayers at Kashi Vishwanath Temple. The Divisional Commissioner issued directives to lodge FIRs against shopkeepers encroaching on corridors and footpaths, despite being removed by the cops.
Sharma also inspected special barricading, cleanliness, and lighting arrangements at the ghats, instructing the municipal corporation to maintain cleanliness and the electricity department to ensure a round-the-clock power supply.
Additional Commissioner of Police S. Chinappa and District Magistrate S. Rajalingam also kept moving through city areas and directed officials to keep the arrangements for crowd management streamlined.