As part of the preparations to cater to an estimated crowd of 10 crore people on January 29, special arrangements have been made at Prayagraj’s railway stations and a mobile police app has been pressed into action. While at Ayodhya, the Ram Mandir Trust has issued an appeal to devotees to visit after 15-20 days.
At all railway stations in Prayagraj, starting on Tuesday, entry and exit routes will be strictly managed with designated gates being allowed for the same so that crowd management remains smooth. While those who have reserved tickets will be allowed entry from one gate, those without tickets will have different gates to use.
Unreserved passengers will enter colour-coded shelters which will have ticket counters, ATMs and mobile ticketing services. A special holding area has been set up at Khusro Bagh with a capacity to accommodate up to one lakh people.
#WATCH | Parayagraj, UP | On security arrangements for #MahaKumbh2025, Prayagraj SSP GRP Abhishek says, "On the occasion of Mauni Amavasya, a large number of special trains are being run by the Railways… A large number of police forces, paramilitary squads, dog squads, bomb… pic.twitter.com/ZYXVP8LCc5
— ANI (@ANI) January 28, 2025
Meanwhile, the police at the mela grounds will be using the Maha Kumbh Police App in which all police activities will be unified. Such activities include standard operating procedures, duty charts, route planning, traffic arrangements on pontoon bridges, crowd and traffic management etc.
This will make all information available at the fingertips of police personnel and also make policing completely paperless. To ensure security, the app will function through the OTP (One time password) method. Field-level activities and planning will be integrated smoothly. Phone numbers of the 40,000 police personnel on duty will be in the app and they will get emergency alerts at once if the need arises. The app also has the ability to convert text from other languages into Hindi to make conversation with non-Hindi speakers easy.
Meanwhile, Champat Rai, General Secretary, Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Tirtha Kshetra, has requested devotees to come to Ayodhya after 15-20 days as 25 lakh pilgrims visited the temple in 30 hours starting from the morning of January 26.
Rai has appealed that devotees from nearby areas postpone their visits so that those coming from far away to Prayagraj can have darshan on priority. “It is very difficult to provide darshan of Ram Lalla to such a large number of devotees in one day and it is causing trouble to the devotees… (they) have to walk more”, Rai said in his appeal.
He has said that there will be a fall in the number of devotees after Basant Panchami (February 2) and the weather will also become better. Hence devotees should consider his request not to visit before that.
