ISRO to BARC, agencies pitch in for the big clean-up at Maha Kumbh

During the last Maha Kumbh, which took place 12 years ago in 2013 during the Akhilesh Yadav-led Uttar Pradesh government, around 12 crore pilgrims had visited the  mela.

Of the Rs 7,000 crore being spent by the Yogi Adityanath-led government on the Kumbh Mela this year, Rs 1,600 crore has been earmarked for water and waste management alone, say officials. 

A gathering this size means authorities will have to find ways to tackle the gargantuan waste generated each day. Sources said authorities are using technology developed by Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to deal with human waste, especially faecal, and greywater (waste water generated from cooking, washing and bathing).

Of the Rs 7,000 crore being spent by the Yogi Adityanath-led government on the Kumbh Mela this year, Rs 1,600 crore has been earmarked for water and waste management alone, say officials.

Of the Rs 1,600 crore, Rs 316 crore will be spent on making the mela area open defecation free (ODF), which includes installation of toilets and urinals, and their monitoring.

On major bath days, like the January 29 Mauni Amavasya, officials estimate a footfall of 50 lakh visitors. These visitors, the authorities say, are expected to generate nearly 16 million litres of fecal sludge and about 240 million litres of greywater per day.

Read: Maha Kumbh Mela 2025 All you need to know: When will it start? Know the dates of the royal bath, its significance

To ensure that the grand event is managed well, the state government had in December 2024 notified the mela area as Uttar Pradesh’s 76th district for four months. The mela ground has been divided into 25 sectors, each of which will function like a city ward with its own water supply, drainage system and waste management infrastructure, say officials.

‘Sadhus’ of ‘Shri Taponidhi Anand Akhara Panchayati’ take part in the ‘Peshwai’ procession, which marks the arrival of ‘sadhus’ and other members of an ‘akhara’ or sect for Maha Kumbh Mela 2025, in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. (PTI Photo)

They said various measures have been put in place to make this year’s Kumbh the “biggest ODF religious gathering”. These measures include the installation of 1.45 lakh toilets; establishment of prefabricated faecal sludge treatment plants (FSTPs) to handle the waste and sludge collected in makeshift septic tanks of toilets; setting up of a 200-km temporary drainage system to channel all greywater to treatment facilities, and temporary and permanent sewage pipelines; creation of water treatment ponds; deployment of sludge carrying vehicles and the use other state-of-the-art technologies.

On treatment of waste, officials said experiments are on with various technologies like the hybrid granular Sequencing Batch Reactor (hgSBR), which has been developed in partnership with BARC and ISRO, and Geotube technology. While hgSBR technology will be used to treat sewage at three FSTPs that are prefabricated among the five, the greywater collected in nearly 75 large ponds — at least two in each sector — will be handled using the  “bioremediation technique”.

On the state government’s “zero-tolerance approach” to open defecation, Amrit Abhijat, Principal Secretary, Urban Development, said of the 1.45 lakh toilets being set up for the Maha Kumbh, 15,000 are fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) with septic tanks, while 10,000 other FRPs have soak pits.

“These (FRP toilets) will mainly be set up in community areas, camps and arenas. About 22,000 pre-fabricated steel toilets with septic tanks and another 17,000 with soak pits have been built in parking zones on the outskirts of the mela ground, government office camps, etc. Special tent-type toilets have been set up in religious camps,” he adds.

Since conventional sewerage systems are not feasible in the mela area, Amit Kumar Singh, Special Secretary, Urban Development, and Joint Managing Director, Uttar Pradesh Jal Nigam (Urban), said the entire wastewater management strategy is based on the use of septic tanks, cesspool vehicles and FSTPs.

Admitting that faecal sludge management is an area of “major focus”, officials said 250 cesspool vehicles have been deployed to transport the sludge to FSTPs.

Besides various measures by the authorities to keep the mela ground clean, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) too is keeping a close eye on the cleanliness of the Ganga since pilgrims will take dips in the river.

Principal Secretary Abhijat says, “The Maha Kumbh will be an example to follow at large-scale religious gatherings all over the world.”