Tracking People Flow, Crowd Density, Alarm System: How AI Is Being Used At Maha Kumbh To Prevent Stampedes

The UP government on Thursday said that the Maha Kumbh Mela had already crossed the 10-crore milestone for pilgrims taking a dip at the Triveni Sangam. Around 30 lakh people took bath by 12 PM today.

The organisers of the world's largest religious gathering — the Maha Kumbh in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, have made the use of artificial intelligence to prevent stampedes and to ensure proper crowd management. 

It had been predicted by the UP CM Yogi Adityanath-led government that the Maha Kumbh Mela will attract nearly 45 crore pilgrims this year. Thus, to avoid any untoward incident or crowd crushes, like the disaster in the1954 Kumbh Mela, the organisers have been using advanced technology to keep things under control. 

The UP government on Thursday said the Maha Kumbh Mela had already crossed the 10-crore milestone for pilgrims taking a dip at the Triveni Sangam. By 12 PM today, 30 lakh people had bathed at the Sangam, including 10 lakh 'kalpvasis' and other devotees, PTI reported. 

With such a massive devotees turnout, the authorities decided to be prepared for potential trouble by using technology to help them gather accurate estimates of crowd sizes.

"We want everyone to go back home happily after having fulfilled their spiritual duties," Amit Kumar, a senior police officer heading tech operations in the festival, told AFP. "AI is helping us avoid reaching that critical mass in sensitive places."

In one of the most devastating crowd-related disaster globally, more than 400 people were killed at the Kumbh Mela on a single day in 1954 after being trampled or drowned in the waters. In 2013, another 36 devoteeswere crushed to death in Prayagraj during the Kumbh.

To avoid a similar disaster, around 300 cameras have been installed at the festival site in Mahakumbh and on roads leading to the massive encampment, mounted on poles. A fleet of overhead drones have also been deployed, AFP reported.

This network is overseen by a small army of police officers and technicians sitting in a a glass-panelled command and control room, which is set up not far from the spiritual centre of the festival at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers.

"We can look at the entire Kumbh Mela from here," said Kumar. "There are camera angles where we cannot even see complete bodies and we have to count using heads or torsos."

The senior police officer said that the footage fed into an AI algorithm provides an overall estimate of a crowd stretching for miles in every direction, which is cross-checked against data from bus operators and railways. "We are using AI to track people flow, crowd density at various inlets, adding them up and then interpolating from there," he added.

In case an area gets concentrated to a level that it might pose a safety threat, the system sounds the alarm, alerting the security.

The Maha Kumbh Mela 2025 kicked off on January 13 and will continue till February 26. Till now, the highest number of pilgrims (around 3.5 crore) had bathed during the Makar Sankranti festival, while more than 1.7 crore participated during the Paush Purnima festival.

According to the Maha Kumbh organisers, the scale of this year's mela is similar to that of a temporary country. The number of devotees that will be thronging the place are expected to total around the combined populations of the United States and Canada, the report said.

With a gathering of such size, Kumar stated that some degree of crowd crush is inevitable. He then went on to explain how the critical threshold at which AI crowd control systems ring the alarm is higher than in other countries that use similar crowd management systems. "The personal bubble of an individual is quite big in the West," Kumar said.

"The standard there is three people per square foot," he added. "But we can afford to go several times higher than that."