Prayagraj's 2025 Maha Kumbh Logged 66 Crore Bathers in 45 Days, a Total Officials Tie to Camera Counts and Independent Outlets Question

The Uttar Pradesh government says 66.21 crore (662 million) devotees bathed at the Sangam in Prayagraj, where the Ganga and Yamuna meet, during the 45 days of the Maha Kumbh, from 13 January to 26 February 2025. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath posted the figure on 26 February, the last day. The Information and Broadcasting Ministry’s statement of the same day gives “66 crores+” and does not say whether that counts different people or bathing visits.

Three totals for one festival

The total moved as the festival closed. PTI’s wrap-up on 26 February quoted the state at 64.77 crore people who had visited Prayagraj since 13 January. The chief minister’s post that day said 66.21 crore bathers. A Ministry of Culture note dated 3 March says over 66.30 crore.

The target had been lower. The Ministry of Culture’s 13 January note expected an estimated 45 crore devotees, and the Information and Broadcasting Ministry’s 26 February document says that figure was passed within a month. The Wire, summarising the same statement, lists 25 crore for the 2019 Kumbh and 12 crore for the 2013 Maha Kumbh. Those are government figures too.

The ministry document also gives approximate crowds for six main bathing days: 1.5 crore on 13 January (Paush Purnima, a full-moon day), 3.5 crore on 14 January (Makar Sankranti), 5 crore on 29 January (Mauni Amavasya, the new-moon day of silence), 2.33 crore on 3 February (Basant Panchami), 2 crore on 12 February (Maghi Purnima) and 1.3 crore on 26 February (Maha Shivratri). Those six days add up to 15.63 crore, by tuput’s arithmetic. The other 39 days would then have averaged about 1.3 crore a day to reach the final total.

How the count was made, as far as anyone has said

Officials have pointed to cameras. The ministry document lists 2,750 AI-based CCTV cameras plus drones. PTI’s wrap-up says more than 3,000 cameras, 1,800 of them AI-enabled. India Today, as cited by Alt News, reported 1,700 cameras, 500 of them AI-powered. Context, the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s news site, reported that the software calculates crowd numbers and alerts staff to surges, fires and people crossing barricades. It did not describe how density becomes a head count.

Amit Kumar, the senior police officer who ran the control centre, told Context that this was the first time AI had been used at a gathering of this size and that police also relied on watching the crowd themselves. Alt News reported that he had warned the same person could be counted more than once across days. It also quoted attendees who described no fixed entry or exit gates and no manual count at entry, and AI developer Rijul Singh, who said density-estimation models are approximate and cannot track unique visitors. PTI reported that officials said they cross-checked pilgrim numbers with railway, roadway and airport staff.

The public transport data is partial. Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said in Prayagraj on 27 February that Indian Railways ran more than 16,000 trains and carried 4.5 to 5 crore passengers, according to Daily Excelsior. Alt News cites the same day’s figures as 17,152 trains and 4.24 crore passengers handled at nine Prayagraj stations. Its tally adds 5,60,174 air passengers on 5,225 flights, 3.25 crore on state-run buses and an estimated 2.7 crore on private buses, about 10.25 crore in all, which leaves roughly 55.75 crore without a published source. Data for private cars and taxis has not been released, so the gap shows what is unpublished and does not prove the total wrong.

A single official number can carry several definitions. India’s tiger count is an example: a photographed figure, a minimum estimate and an average, each official, each different.

A city of 4,000 hectares that stood for six weeks

The festival ground covered about 4,000 hectares along the riverbanks, according to Context, and was divided into 25 sectors. The Ministry of Culture says 1.6 lakh tents were set up for the Kalpvasis, the pilgrims who spend the month from Paush Purnima to Magh Purnima in tents beside the Sangam under vows of simplicity and daily prayer. The ministry documents list 30 pontoon bridges built from 3,308 pontoons and 2,69,000 steel checkered plates laid as roads. Dredging reclaimed 64 acres (about 26 hectares) near the Sangam and tripled its bathing capacity compared with 2019, according to Hinduism Today and the Ministry of Culture.

The government’s own documents differ on staffing. The 26 February document gives 10,200 sanitation workers and 1,800 Ganga Sevadoots in one place and 22,000 sanitation workers in another, and the 3 March note says more than 15,000 workers and 2,000 Sevadoots. The 3 March note puts the portable toilets at over 1.5 lakh.

For security, the 26 February document reports over 50,000 personnel, including 14,000 home guards. PTI’s wrap-up breaks that into 37,000 police and 14,000 home guards, with three river police stations and 50 watchtowers. The document also records 3,050 buses allocated, 1,200 more added on 12 February, and 750 shuttle buses inside the city. A 100-bed central hospital sat at the Parade Ground. India Post staff paid out cash through Aadhaar-linked accounts inside the fairground, the same document says.

Dismantling began once the last bath was done. Hinduism Today reports that most of the city was cleared within 30 days and the site restored within 45. The Ministry of Culture says fire and emergency services carried more than 5 lakh litres of Sangam water to all 75 districts of the state, and that more than 90,000 prison inmates were given the chance to bathe in it.

The cycle, the nectar and the akharas

The festival rests on an account that devotees hold to be true. The ministry’s document gives it this way: gods and demons fought over the amrit, the nectar of immortality, produced when the ocean was churned, and drops fell at four places, Prayagraj, Haridwar, Ujjain and Nashik, where the Kumbh is now held. The four sites sit on the Ganga at Haridwar, the Shipra at Ujjain, the Godavari at Nashik and, at Prayagraj, the confluence of the Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati.

The ministry says the Kumbh is celebrated four times over a course of 12 years and that the date of each is fixed by the positions of the Sun, Moon and Jupiter. It describes the Maha Kumbh as occurring once every 144 years at Prayagraj. The Wire reports that the 1954, 2001 and 2013 editions were each also described as once-in-144-years events.

The day with the largest crowd, Mauni Amavasya, commemorates, in the ministry’s telling, the sage Rishabh Dev ending a long vow of silence by entering the Sangam. Makar Sankranti, Mauni Amavasya and Basant Panchami were the three Amrit Snan days, when akhara seers bathed, PTI reports. An akhara is a monastic order of ascetics. According to IANS, 13 akharas took part this year, in three groups: Sanyasi (Shaiva), Bairagi (Vaishnava) and Udasin. On 14 January the Mahanirvani and Atal akharas bathed first. The ministry’s document calls these baths Shahi Snan, the royal bath, while PTI and IANS call them Amrit Snan.

What UNESCO listed in 2017

In December 2017 the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, meeting in Jeju, South Korea, inscribed the Kumbh Mela on its Representative List. UNESCO’s entry describes it as “the largest peaceful congregation of pilgrims on earth”, held in rotation at Allahabad (now Prayagraj), Haridwar, Ujjain and Nasik, and says its main bearers belong to akhadas and ashrams or live on alms. It names the teacher-student relationship between sadhus as the most important way the knowledge is passed on.

The Committee found that India’s file met all five criteria and noted the festival had been in India’s national inventory since 2016. It also invited India to avoid terms such as “intact” and “purest form”, which sit badly with a living tradition, and encouraged India to weigh risks from tourism and rising visitor numbers, including effects on the environment, in its safeguarding plans.

The night of 29 January

Between 1 and 2 am on Wednesday 29 January, the morning of Mauni Amavasya, a crowd crush at the Sangam area killed devotees. Vaibhav Krishna, the deputy inspector general in charge of the Kumbh police, told reporters that evening that 30 had died, that more than 90 were taken to hospital and that the incident happened “due to the pressure of the crowd,” PTI reported. Chief Minister Adityanath announced Rs 25 lakh for each bereaved family, ended VIP protocol in the Mela and ordered a judicial commission.

Alt News recorded the sequence of official statements. At 12:05 pm the senior superintendent of police, Rajesh Dwivedi, said no stampede had occurred. At 6:39 pm Krishna confirmed 30 dead, about 17 hours after the crush. A senior administrative official, who was not authorised to speak to media, told Context that the AI cameras had sent timely alerts about surges but too few police were on the ground where the jam formed. A police official told Context that a second crush began on the opposite side of the river. The Wire reported that police later acknowledged seven deaths at a second crush in Jhusi.

The toll has four figures from four sources. Police said 30 on the day. Newslaundry reported at least 79 on 5 February. On 30 March the Prayagraj administration released a list of 36 of the 37 people who died, and Mela officer Vijay Kiran Anand said 36 had been identified, ETV Bharat reported. On 10 June BBC Hindi reported at least 82 deaths after visiting more than 50 districts in 11 states, according to South First’s account. Of those, 36 families had received the full Rs 25 lakh. Another 26 had been given Rs 5 lakh in cash, on condition they signed papers attributing the death to sudden illness, and the rest received nothing, the BBC reported. South First says the BBC asked state officials about the Rs 5 lakh payments and received no reply.

The three-member commission is led by Justice Harsh Kumar, a retired Allahabad High Court judge, with former police chief V K Gupta and retired IAS officer D K Singh. It was given one month. After the Allahabad High Court suggested broader terms, a notification of 22 February added the loss of life and property and the coordination between the Mela, district and health administrations, and its tenure was extended by a month from 1 March, LiveLaw reported. On 3 February the Supreme Court declined a petition over the stampede and told the petitioner to go to the High Court, noting that the commission was already in place. On 19 March the commission asked the public for statements with affidavits and for original video within ten days, and ETV Bharat said it had recorded statements from 30 police officers and expected to report soon. We found no published findings in the coverage reviewed for this article.