The 49-day long Prayagraj Kumbh Mela concluded on Tuesday, with six feats as these events were hitherto unseen in the previous chapters of the spiritual congregation
New Delhi/Prayagraj: The 49-day Prayagraj Kumbh Mela, branded as “Divya Kumbh, Bhavya Kumbh” was the largest religious congregation in the world, which began from Makar Sankranti. It concluded with the auspicious bath on Maha Shivaratri.
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath formally concluded the mela on Tuesday. The state government had made elaborate arrangements to enable the pilgrims as well as other visitors to have a comfortable stay at the Kumbh.
Here are the major takeaways from the spiritual event.
Around 24 crore devotees from across the world took the holy dip at the Sangam—one of the six main bathing festivals of the Kumbh. Many prominent personalities, who visited the Kumbh included Prime Minister Narendra Modi, President Ram Nath Kovind, Prime Minister of Mauritius Pravind Jugunath, BJP president Amit Shah, chief minister Yogi Adityanath, Samajwadi Party supremo Akhilesh Yadav, etc.
Prayagraj Kumbh Mela 2019 entered the Guinness World Records in three sectors: the largest traffic and crowd management plan, the biggest painting exercise of public sites under the ‘Paint My City’ scheme and the biggest sanitation and waste disposal mechanism.
A three-member team from the Guinness World Records visited Prayagraj for this purpose. An exercise of a large scale was undertaken for three days: February 28 to March 3.
Around 503 shuttle buses were pressed into service in one go for the visitors and three-member team from Guinness World Records on February 28 on the highway. Several people participated in the painting contest on March 1. About 10,000 workers were engaged in cleaning at Prayagraj Kumbh performing their duties all together.
Delegates from all over the world visited the Sangam in Prayagraj to be at the Kumbh Mela. Sangam is the confluence of rivers Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati in Prayagraj. Two hundred fifty delegates from 192 countries visited the holy city to experience the grand festival of spirituality, faith and harmony under the theme of global participation in Kumbh 2019. The guests witnessed various wonderful aspects of Kumbh along with Akshay Vat and Saraswati Koop.
In Prayagraj Kumbh Mela everything bore a new look. ‘Lost and found’ centres or Khoya-Paya Kendras were an integral part of this Kumbh Mela. These centres came up with new state-of-the-art technologies and communication tools. The sprawling, extant mela arena had over 20 sectors and they were covered by 15 lost-and-found centres. Web-based information system, geo-tagging of different sectors had been done so that when someone complained to the police, the complainant could be automatically located. A mass-messaging system was used by the police on social media besides public address system and audio-visual displays.
First the first time at Prayagraj Kumbh, about 800 ascetics were given sannyas diksha at the Dashanami Juna Akhara. All religious ceremonies were completed on the bank of the Ganga. The ceremony was initiated with the tonsuring of the heads of ‘saints’ and holy dip in the river. Barbers were called from Haridwar and Varanasi for the tonsuring. Several rituals were performed at the camp of the akhara and on the bank of the river including diksha by acharya mahamandaleshwar of the akhara Swami Awadeshanand Maharaj. Ascetics who were given sannyas diksha included six from abroad. They were given the diksha after close monitoring of their behaviour for three years at the akhara.
First time in the history of the Kumbh, the Uttar Pradesh government's Cabinet meeting was held at the Kumbh. Chief minister Yogi Adityanath chaired the meeting. Before attending the Cabinet, Yogi worshipped at the Hanuman temple at Sangam and visited the Akshaya Vat. Most of the state ministers, including both deputy chief ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dr Dinesh Sharma, attended the meeting. The Cabinet decided to construct a 600 km-long Ganga Expressway from Meerut to Prayagraj for a cost of Rs 36,000 crore — to provide better connectivity from Western districts to Prayagraj. The Cabinet also approved of a proposal of Gorakhpur link road project connecting Azamgarh and Ambedkarnagar with Purvanchal expressway at a cost of Rs 5,555 crore.
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