PLANNING DISASTER

How the UP government abandoned well laid norms for the Kumbh

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The Kumbh Mela, a Hindu pilgrimage festival held every 12 years, was slated to be a mammoth event drawing millions of visitors. It was held at Uttar Pradesh’s Prayagraj from 13 January to 26 February this year and, for the Bharatiya Janata Party, it was of vital importance. The state government, helmed by Adityanath, had allocated nearly R7,500 crore to it. The last Kumbh in the city had been held in 2013, when the Samajwadi Party was in power and Manmohan Singh was the prime minister, heading the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance. The city was called Allahabad then. Given that this would be India’s largest public gathering, planning logistics was crucial.

On 30 January, the Kumbh administration released a series of directives announcing that routes for devotees would be made one-way. There would be vehicular restrictions, and, most notably, all VIP passes were to be cancelled on important days of the Kumbh Mela. The directives came a day after a stampede killed at least thirty people at the Kumbh. The disaster occurred on Mauni Amavasya, a key ritual that attracted over 76 million pilgrims this year. This was the first stampede to occur at the Triveni Sangam area—considered a sacred confluence of the rivers Ganga and Yamuna, and the mythical river Sarasvati—since 1954.