New Delhi, January 15: The Railways is committed to ensure that devotees going to ongoing Mahakumbh do not face any convenience. 137 additional trains operated or are being run today to help devotees across the country to reach Prayagraj besides 349 regular trains. The total number of passengers at Prayagraj stations in the first two days exceeded 15 lakh 60 thousand. These trains include trains bringing people from faraway places to take part in Kumbh as well as ring rail services offering point to point connectivity to devotees so that they can also go to nearby temple towns like Chitrakoot, Ayodhya and Varanasi.
Indian Railways intends to operate more than 13,100 trains during the 46 day-long Mahakumbh for the convenience of devotees. Out of them, more than 10,000 regular trains and over 3,100 special trains are being run. The number of special trains is 4.5 times higher compared to the previous Kumbh. Of these, 1,800 trains are for short distances and 700 trains for long distances. Indian Railways is also operating 560 trains on four different routes through ring rail connecting Prayagraj. The routes are Prayagraj-Ayodhya-Varanasi-Prayagraj, Prayagraj-Sangam Prayag-Jaunpur-Prayag-Prayagraj, Govindpuri-Prayagraj-Chitrakoot-Govindpuri and Jhansi-Govindpuri-Prayagraj-Manikpur-Chitrakoot-Jhansi routes.
On the second day of Mahakumbh, more than 3.5 crore devotees rushed to the Mahakumbh Mela not only from different parts of the country but also from the world. In order to improve the rush situation, different railway divisions are running more pairs of special trains from various stations in the country for the Mahakumbh. In the coming days, more than 15 pairs of trains will be run from various stations in the Bhopal division for the Maha Kumbh.
For the convenience of passengers, the railways have developed 9 railway stations around Mahakumbh. Prayagraj, Phaphamau, Rambag, and Jhunsi yard have been remodeled to allow more trains to operate from Prayagraj. Subedarganj station has been developed as a satellite station to afford Prayagraj Junction which alone handled 45% of Mela crowd in last Kumbh of 2019. 7 new platforms have been constructed at the stations in Prayagraj area. Now 48 platforms are available at 9 stations of Prayagraj area.
Railways have made adequate arrangement for waiting passengers. 17 New permanent Yatri Ashryas are operational in the region. With this total no. of Yatri Ashryas at Railways stations have become 28. As a result, holding capacity of these Yatri Ashryas has increased from 21,000 to more than one lakh ten thousand. In preparation for the massive influx of devotees during Mahakumbh, the Railway has introduced a systematic color-coding scheme for Yatri Ashrayas at various stations. This initiative aims to improve passenger convenience by streamlining navigation and facilitating better access to designated waiting areas.
Additional toilets have been constructed at the railway stations. Adequate drinking water arrangements and food arrangements are being made at each and every station. All the waiting rooms and lounges have been upgraded. Yatri Suvidha Kendra have been launched at Prayagraj Junction and Prayagraj Chheoki for the first time which will facilitate the passengers with wheel chairs, luggage trolleys, hotel and taxi booking, providing medicines, baby milk and other essential items to passengers in train.
So far, to secure the movement of devotees and trains, about 5900 security personnel, including 3,200 RPF personnel, were deployed across the nine railway stations in and around Prayagraj spanning the NCR, NER, and NR zones. 764 new CCTV cameras have been installed which has become total 1186 now. This includes 116 Face Recognition System (FRS) cameras which are being used first time to identify the miscreants. For the first time, drone cameras are being used for surveillance of track and monitoring of crowd on approach road to the stations.
