Heena Sharma Blog

  Marking the beginning of the auspicious Kumbh Mela on Thursday, over 7 lakh devotees took a holy dip in the bank of river Ganga in Haridwar, said the Information Department of the Uttarakhand government. As many as 7,11,000 devotees performed rituals at Har ki Pairi during the time of aarti. The government said that all COVID-19 health protocols were followed on the first day of the Kumbh and 974 people were fined for flouting the guidelines. "The soldiers of Uttarakhand's Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), Pradeshik Armed Constabulary (PAC) and Central Paramilitary Force (CPF) and five teams of the Bomb Disposal Squad are deployed in Haridwar for the safety of devotees during the Kumbh Mela 2021," the state government said. In addition to the radio communication system, concerned authorities have installed over 1,000 CCTV cameras to keep a strict vigil on the entire fair. Read More

Vodafone Idea has launched a slew of initiatives for ongoing Kumbh mela, including Milaap service aimed at ensuing safety of children and senior citizens, as well as location alerts and other digital solutions, the company said Thursday. The Milaap services, involves providing RFID (radio frequency identification) tags to children and senior citizens along with the details of parents or guardians. "These RFID tags - enabled with a simple identification process will allow local authorities or police to take any child or senior citizen found unaccompanied or under a panic situation to visit the nearest Vodafone Milaap or Khoya Paya booth. On flashing these RFID tags on the RFID reader, the concerned parent's contact details will be accessed," Vodafone Idea, that owns the Vodafone brand of mobile services, said in a statement. The family member will receive the details of the concerned booth from where they can re-unite with their child, the statement explained.

Outside one of the akharas in the Kumbh Mela area, a dairy booth owner is woken up by the noise of an approaching customer. The customer walks up to him for some lassi and begins political chatter: “Did you hear? They’ve announced that Priyanka [Gandhi Vadra] will also fight elections.” The booth owner, Sunil Kumar Tripathi, listens, and then says “it’s all nonsense” and that “only idiots will vote for her”. A little prodding by the customer led Tripathi to elaborate why a voter has to be an “idiot” to vote for Priyanka, the newest general secretary of the All India Congress Committee and in charge of eastern Uttar Pradesh. “See, people who voted for Indira Gandhi will think Priyanka is her reincarnation. Those staunch Hindu believers of punar janam (rebirth) will buy into that narrative,” he says. It is, of course, another matter that Priyanka was almost 13 when her grandmother was assassinated. Unlike her brother Rahul Gandhi, whose name largely received puzzled looks or