Mahakumbhnagar, December 10 (IANS). While on one hand Mahakumbh-2025 will set a new record in the number of devotees, on the other hand Yogi government will create a new history by conducting the world’s largest headcount with the help of modern technology. It is estimated that this time in Mahakumbh, between 40 to 45 crore devotees can come to Prayagraj to take a holy dip in the Triveni Sangam of Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati.
In order to accurately assess the number of devotees coming in such a large number, the Yogi government is going to do a headcount of each devotee through technology. Not only Mahakumbh, but this could be the largest headcount in any major event in the world. On the instructions of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, the fair administration is trying to achieve this feat through AI technology as well as many other methods.
Whenever Kumbh or Maha Kumbh is organized in Prayagraj, a large number of devotees come to take a dip of faith. However, till now there was no accurate technique to count their numbers. This time the Yogi government is taking the help of AI cameras as well as many other technologies, so that each and every devotee coming to Mahakumbh can be counted and tracked.
In this regard, Divisional Commissioner Vijay Vishwas Pant said that this time more than 40 crore people are likely to come to Mahakumbh, which will be the biggest record till date. Special arrangements have been made for counting and tracking such a large number of people. Around 744 temporary CCTV cameras are being installed at 200 locations inside the fair area to track devotees, while 1,107 permanent CCTV cameras have been installed at 268 locations inside the city. Not only this, 720 CCTV cameras have been installed at more than 100 parking spots.
He said that apart from ICCC and Police Line Control Room, viewing centers have also been made in Aral and Jhunsi areas, from where efforts are being made to monitor the devotees. The headcount of such a large number of devotees is a big challenge, but the use of AI will be very important in this. Efforts are also being made to count people through ‘Crowd Density Algorithm’ using AI. AI based crowd management will ‘generate real time alerts’, through which it will be easier for the concerned authorities to count and track the devotees.
According to the technical staff looking after the work of headcount modeling in the ICCC established in the fair area, ‘turnaround cycle’ is important to ensure that a devotee is not counted repeatedly in the headcount. Technology is being used to track this. The average time taken by a pilgrim in the ghat area has been considered as the ‘turnaround cycle’. Under this, the number of samples is calculated on the basis of ‘Cochran’s Formula’. The sample count is done taking the estimated population as 20 lakh on non-peak days and 10 crore on peak days.
The turnaround time will be the average data of samples obtained through three prescribed methods. The first in this will be attribute based search, under which tracking will be done on the basis of ‘Person Attribute Search Camera’. The second will be based on RFID wristbands, wherein wristbands will be provided to the devotees visiting each day of the Maha Kumbh along with the main bath. The wrist band will be tracked through RFID reader, which will reveal how much time the pilgrim spent in the fair area, how long he was inside and how long he was outside. The third method will be tracking through mobile app, in which location tracking can be done through the GPS location of the mobile app on the consent of the pilgrims. The work of testing headcount through all these methods is in progress.
AI cameras are being used on a large scale for headcount of devotees coming to Mahakumbh. These cameras will update the data every minute. The entire focus will be on the devotees coming to the ghat. This system will be fully active from 3 am to 7 pm, because this is considered to be the main time for bathing. Earlier these methods were also used during Magh Mela. Through this, headcount can be estimated up to 95 percent accurately.
–IANS
SK/ABM
