For more than 170 years, the Indian Railway has been the cheapest and easiest mode of travel for the common man. Indian Railways had made massive arrangements for Maha Kumbh by running more than 13,000 special trains, but all these have proved to be inadequate.
The unadulterated enthusiasm among devotees heading towards Maha Kumbh and returning home after taking a holy dip at the confluence of Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati is spreading fast. In all directions. By Tuesday (February 18), more than 55 crore people had taken a holy dip at Prayagraj. Only eight days are left for the Maha Kumbh to end and there is no sign of this excitement ebbing. By Tuesday noon, 59 lakh devotees had taken a dip since early morning. Looking at the flow of devotees from all directions towards Maha Kumbh, one can easily assume that the total number might cross the 60 crore mark by Mahashivratri (February 26), when the congregation ends. People from all corners of India are flocking towards Prayagraj and Indian Railways is bearing the full brunt of this mega flow of devotees.
For more than 170 years, the Indian Railway has been the cheapest and easiest mode of travel for the common man. Indian Railways had made massive arrangements for Maha Kumbh by running more than 13,000 special trains, but all these have proved to be inadequate. There are huge crowds thronging at all major stations in UP, Bihar, Jharkhand and National Capital Region. Railway officials are devising new methods daily for crowd management at stations.
On Monday, I paid a visit to the war room at Railway Ministry to have a first-hand view of how officials are coping with the situation. Each train going to Maha Kumbh was being monitored at the war room, which was working 24×7. I was surprised to see the Railway Board chairman Satish Kumar himself present inside the war room. He had served as general manager in the past in Lucknow and Prayagraj and he knew the railway routes like the back of his hand. The director general of Railway Protection Force, Manoj Yadava, was also present, monitoring the situation inside the war room. Indian Railways had made preparations for Maha Kumbh nearly two and a half years ago and a huge infrastructure was created at Prayagraj. But nobody had any inkling that more than 50 crore devotees would flock to Maha Kumbh. The Railway Board had to change its strategy.
Indian Railways has now started issuing four types of colour-coded tickets to passengers heading in different directions. For example, for travellers heading towards Kanpur, Delhi, Ludhiana, Chandigarh or Jammu from Prayagraj, they are issued green coloured tickets, so that volunteers deployed at entry points can guide them towards their respective platforms. For those going to Varanasi, Ayodhya, Jaunpur, Pratapgarh, etc. travellers are issued red-coded tickets, for those going towards Bihar, Bengal or Odisha, blue-coded tickets are being given, and for those going towards MP and other nearby states, yellow coded tickets are being given at Prayagraj. The holding areas at the station have been coloured in four different codes, for devotees to go there and wait for their trains.
Special trains are being operated from eight different stations around Prayagraj. On February 16, 388 trains took off from Prayagraj carrying more than 18 lakh devotees to their destinations. Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw is working round-the-clock overseeing arrangements. 1186 CCTV cameras have been set up at different railway stations around Prayagraj to keep a watch on the crowds.
At New Delhi railway station, crowd management norms have been changed after the unfortunate Saturday night stampede. The sale of platform tickets at New Delhi has been discontinued till February 26. To avoid the recurrence of stampede, entry to platforms will allowed for passengers holding valid tickets only. Travellers will have to stand in queues when trains arrive at the station to avoid push and shove situation.
Most of the travellers coming to Prayagraj by trains are from Bihar and Bengal. Huge crowds have been noticed at several major Bihar stations like Patna and Sasaram. In Uttar Pradesh, there were crowds at Kashi, Ayodhya, Mirzapur and Chandauli stations, but they were under control. On highways, traffic snarls still exist on roads leading towards Prayagraj. Almost the entire Prayagraj city is chock-a-block with vehicles and walking pilgrims.
On Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav raising crowd management issues, UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath said on Monday that people should not forget that the crowd this time was five times more compared to the 2013 Kumbh Mela. Yogi said, only 12 crore devotees came to Kumbh Mela in 2013 in a time span of 55 days. The Ardha Kumbh took place in 2019 which was attended by nearly 24 crore people. But this time, at the Maha Kumbh, 55 crore devotees have already come in 36 days and eight days are still left. Using fiery logic, Yogi Adityanath said, the days are gone when everything Hindutva or Bharatiya was being sniggered at and the nation is still bearing the consequences. ‘We were told that anything that is Bharat is not important, and everything outside Bharat is significant. The consequences are there for all to see. It was Modi Ji who first made Indians feel the significance of being a Bharatiya and connected them to Bharatiya values and beliefs’, Yogi said.
I think Yogi Adityanath is right. The Maha Kumbh has given all Indians a chance to watch and feel the rich legacy of Sanatan Dharma. It was not an easy task to arrange the Maha Kumbh on such a gigantic scale. There were two options: One, either allow only 10 to 12 crore devotees to come and claim that the Maha Kumbh was great, or Two: make arrangements for 50 crore people to come and make arrangements for their stay, food, bath and meditation. The first path was not risky, but the second path was full of challenges. Yogi Adityanath preferred the second path. Merely creating a huge Mela Kshetra was not sufficient. Arrangements were made for stay, parking, pontoon bridges for easy access to the river, cleanliness, hygiene and facilities for treatment, apart from ensuring that the thousands of ascetics and sadhus are given their due respect.
Making all such arrangements was not an easy job. Railways had a big role in these preparations. 300 to 350 special trains were run daily. The rail tracks were the same, the staff was the same and yet, arrangements were made for crores of devotees. This is unimaginable by itself. Ashwini Vaishnaw took up the biggest challenge in the history of Indian Railways by ensuring the largest movement of travellers ever. He personally monitored the preparations that had begun two and a half years ago. It was only because of this that 55 crore people took their holy dip at Prayagraj and prayed to Maa Ganga. This is not only a world record. It is a topic which requires to be researched with proper attention.
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