Curtains down on this Kumbh, a look back at the 2013 Mela Yogi Adityanath invoked

Like in this Kumbh, a stampede occurred during the 2013 Mela too as lives were lost at the Prayagraj (then Allahabad) railway station. After the conclusion of the Mela, which was studied by a team from Harvard University, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) submitted a report.

Scale of the event

The event was held across 1,936 hectares along the Sangam embankment. According to government figures, the 55-day event between January 14 and March 10 that year, attracted almost 12 crore devotees, with an estimated 3 crore arriving in Prayagraj on the auspicious Mauni Amavasya day. The government released Rs 1,152 crore for the event, according to government records.

The event also seemingly resulted in an infrastructure push, with 156.2 km of roads laid, 90 parking lots set up, and 18 pontoon bridges constructed over the Ganga. A total of 43,000 toilets were also built, of which 35,000 were individual toilets, 7,500 were trench toilets, and about 1,000 were composting toilets. Records show that 22,000 electricity poles were also erected to ensure power supply.

According to the records, 750 trains and 4,000 buses ferried pilgrims to and from Kumbh, while 30 police stations were established in Kumbh city.

A stampede and other controversies

Akhilesh did visit the Mela area to oversee preparation but sources said neither officials nor local SP workers were aware of his visit, which lasted for around two hours.

One of the political rows occurred when Sonia Gandhi, then the Congress president, cancelled her visit to the Kumbh citing a “lack of cooperation” by the state government.

On February 10, the event made the news for the wrong reasons after a stampede left 38 people dead on platform numbers three and four of the railway station, the day of Mauni Amavasya, which according to devotees is one of the most auspicious days for taking a dip in the Sangam.

Azam Khan, who was the nodal minister for Kumbh, took “moral responsibility” for the incident and offered to quit, while maintaining that the site of the tragedy did not fall under the “Kumbh Mela Area”. The move sparked a war of words between the state and the Centre. Akhilesh did not accept Khan’s resignation and instead lauded him for the conduct of the event.

The stampede also led to the constitution of a judicial panel under retired Justice Onkareshwar Bhatt, which submitted its report to then Governor Ram Naik on August 14, 2014. The report blamed the railway administration as well as the police, the local administration, and the Uttar Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation.

The Kumbh Mela concluded on March 12 that year, but was again in the news a month later when Harvard University invited him to deliver a lecture on the organisation of the event.

Akhilesh, along with Khan and a team of officials led by then Chief Secretary Jawed Usmani, was scheduled to make the presentation on April 26 at Harvard during a session titled “Harvard without borders: Mapping the Kumbh Mela”. But, in a last-minute turn of events, they pulled out after Khan was reportedly stopped at the Boston airport for questioning. Usmani and his team later made the presentation.

The spotlight continued to be on the 2013 Kumbh after the Narendra Modi-led NDA government assumed power for the first time at the Centre the following year and the CAG report was released in July 2014.

What did the Harvard study show?

A Harvard University team of 50, including faculty members, staff, researchers, and students, also conducted a study on the Kumbh.

The study — it was later published as a book, “Kumbh Mela, mapping the ephemeral megacity” — looked into all aspects of the event. It compared the event to the 2010 Commonwealth Games and the 2014 FIFA World Cup and expressed astonishment about how millions of people were served for such a long duration without any major boycott, protests, or stampede within the Mela area. Praising the smooth conduct of the event and the absence of any religious tension, the study said, “No sign of interference of the government was seen in what was taught in the akharas. There was no outbreak of significant communicable disease.”

The study, however, expressed concerns about pollution and cleanliness. While it noted that toilets were constructed and cleaned by outsourced staff, it voiced concerns about “massive debris being left behind after the event ended”.

The study also tracked cell phone data of pilgrims, finding that about 40 crore communications were generated between January 1 and March 31, including 14 crore text messages and 25 crore calls. The highest number of calls were made on the day of Mauni Amavasya.