Kanwar Yatra: Devotees asked to bring ID cards, keep 'kanwars' smaller to avoid accidents

Devotees participating in the upcoming ‘Kanwar Yatra’ have been asked to carry their identity cards and keep the height of their ‘kanwars’ less than 12 feet to avoid accidents.

Officials said on Saturday that the decisions were taken at an inter-state coordination meeting of police officials chaired by Uttarakhand DGP Ashok Kumar at the state police headquarters in Dehradun.

This year, the ‘Kanwar Yatra’ will begin on July 4 and go on till July 15.

The DGP said that in order to ensure the safety of devotees in one of the largest religious events in the country, police departments from all the concerned states should collaborate well in advance for effective crowd management.

He added that drones and CCTVs will be used to monitor the event.

“Limiting the height of kanwars to less than 12 feet was necessary due to 100 per cent electrification of the railway tracks in Uttarakhand. Bringing higher kanwars with totally electrified railway tracks could be risky,” an official who attended the meeting said.

Kanwar Yatra is an annual religious event where devotees of Lord Shiv called ‘kanwaris’ travel to Haridwar by foot. They carry two containers attached to a single pole usually made of bamboo on their shoulders to fetch water from the Ganga River. The water-filled containers are then carried for hundreds of miles to offer the water to local Shiva temples.

This year, around four crore kanwariyas are expected to arrive in Haridwar, Haridwar’s Senior Superintendent of Police Ajay Singh said.

Kanwariyas will also be able to receive information like vehicle parking spaces and route diversion by scanning a QR code issued by the Haridwar Police.

As many as 333 CCTV cameras will be installed in the Kanwar fair area and more than 5,000 police personnel deployed in and around Haridwar to maintain a vigil, the officials said.

Twelve companies of central paramilitary forces have been sought from the Centre besides three bomb disposal and dog squads, the meeting was informed. The meeting was attended in person or virtually by police officials from Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan, they said.

With inputs from PTI

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