The Uttar Pradesh government has pulled out all the stops for the Prayagraj Maha Kumbh – the first Maha Kumbh under Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath – which is slated to be held in January-February 2025.
The CM himself is expected to visit Prayagraj on November 25, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi is tentatively expected on December 12, officials said, to oversee the preparations. Adityanath has promised that it would be “grander than all the Kumbhs” the country has seen.
Before this, Adityanath oversaw an Ardh Kumbh as CM in 2019. The UP government is planning to double the scale of the Maha Kumbh, including ensuring for the first time the presence of religious organisations from the Northeast and South India to give a national scale, an official acquainted with the preparations said.
Recently, Adityanath had a long meeting with the RSS top brass at a two-day Sangh session in Mathura, where he sought its help on participation in the Maha Kumbh of sections of Hindu society such as the Lingayats of Karnataka. The CM said it was important to reach out to these communities as they had either stayed away from such festivals or had “never been invited”.
Successful organisation of the Maha Kumbh, one of the biggest religious congregations in the world, will help bolster Adityanath’s standing that took a beating within the BJP after the party’s poor performance in the Lok Sabha polls in Uttar Pradesh. It will particularly help shore up his credentials as one of the BJP’s foremost Hindutva faces.
“This is going to be the biggest religious congregation in the coming years, and so we want to give it an unprecedented scale. We are expecting 50 crore people to come. We are inviting Sanatan religious organisations from the South and Northeast for the first time. We want the temporary city we are building parallel to Prayagraj for the Maha Kumbh to be a microcosm of Sanatan Dharma,” a UP official, not wishing to be named, said.
Adityanath has said all UP government departments will play a role in organising the Maha Kumbh, and that their projects related to the event would be prioritised. December 10 has been set as the deadline for completing all the preparations.
Adityanath has unveiled a logo, website and a mobile app for the Maha Kumbh, and announced that no sale of meat and liquor would take place within the “traditional boundaries” of Prayagraj during the period.
The Samajwadi Party, under whose government the last Maha Kumbh was held, has accused the Adityanath government of furthering political interests in the garb of the arrangements. “It is the duty of the administration to provide the best arrangements. But when a district magistrate starts showering flowers on Kanwar Yatris from a helicopter, for example, it is akin to crossing a Lakshman Rekha,” a senior SP leader said, referring to several incidents of officials doing this since Adityanath became CM.
Recently, SP leader and Akhilesh Yadav’s wife Dimple Yadav criticised a demand by the Akhil Bharatiya Akhara Parishad that the entry of those not following ‘Sanatana Dharm’ be barred at the Kumbh, including licences to them to set up stalls. “These people are talking against the Constitution because they don’t want the country to function as per the Constitution. Rather, they want it run as per their whims,” Dimple was quoted as saying, drawing criticism from the Akhara Parishad.
Former UP chief secretary Alok Ranjan, who was the SP’s Rajya Sabha candidate in 2024, said there is a tendency now to play up everything done by the government. “In 2013, the Akhilesh Yadav government’s arrangements of tents, water, power, food and security for the Maha Kumbh had drawn much appreciation,” he pointed out.
As per officials, on the cards is an increase in the number of tents to 1.6 lakh to accommodate the surge in pilgrims, clearing of 4,000 hectares of land for their stay, and laying of 400 km of temporary roads, plus 30 temporary bridges for the event. Around 7,000 roadways buses will be dedicated to the Maha Kumbh, alongside 550 shuttle buses, and seven bus stands. Three lakh saplings are being planted to project a ‘Green Maha Kumbh’, while four government hospitals of Prayagraj and the medical college are being given a facelift. For the provision of drinking water, 1,249 km of pipelines are being laid.