Ahmedabad’s 149th Lord Jagannath Rath Yatra rolled out from the Jamalpur temple at 7 a.m. on July 16, backed by one of the largest security operations the city mounts each year: roughly 31,000 police and paramilitary personnel spread across a 16.2-km route that the three main chariots and accompanying procession take nearly 14 hours to complete, according to Prokerala/IANS and Gujarat Samachar.
What the deployment looked like
Both outlets describe a force built from roughly 30,000 police and home guards, a few thousand State Reserve Police, and central units including the BSF and RAF. Layered on top of the manpower is a technology stack that has expanded steadily since the 2024 Rajkot gaming zone fire pushed crowd-safety planning up the agenda for large Gujarat public events: over 3,700 CCTV cameras along the route, close to 100 drones watching a 500-metre band on either side, two anti-drone guns, 240-250 rooftop observation posts, and a facial-recognition database covering roughly 65,000 people with prior criminal records. Officers also carried more than 2,000 body-worn cameras this year.
Ahead of the procession, police ran a preventive sweep rather than relying only on the day’s presence: over 90 people were detained under the Prevention of Anti-Social Activities Act, 17 externment orders were issued, and dozens of Arms Act and NDPS cases were booked in the weeks before the event, per the Prokerala/IANS report. A dedicated cyber cell also monitored social media and dark-web channels for rumours in the run-up to the Yatra.
Why the elephants get their own protocol
One detail stands out because it points to a real 2025 incident rather than routine planning: this year’s briefing instructs officers not to blow whistles near the 18 elephants leading the procession, and a “Gajraj Squad” now moves 100-150 metres ahead of the animals to quiet nearby DJ systems and stop firecrackers. That rule exists, per the same report, because an elephant became agitated during last year’s Yatra. It is a small but telling example of how Gujarat Police iterate on crowd-safety protocol after each edition rather than repeating a fixed template.
What it means for residents
For Ahmedabad residents and the lakhs of devotees who line the route or travel in for the day, the scale of this operation translates into practical friction: extended road closures across the old city, restricted vehicle movement near Jamalpur, Kalupur, Prem Darwaza and Shahpur through the evening, and airport authorities separately advising travellers to budget extra time given diversions around SVPI Airport. It also means a far lower-risk crowd than the informal management Gujarat’s religious gatherings relied on in decades past, a gap that matters given how fast a dense crowd can turn dangerous, as the 2024 Rajkot gaming zone fire showed in an unrelated but sobering way.
The bigger pattern is civic, not just religious. Ahmedabad’s Rath Yatra has effectively become a live annual test of the city’s emergency-response infrastructure. The drone fleets, control rooms and AI-monitoring tools built up for the Yatra tend to get reused for other mass gatherings later in the year, including election counting days and major festivals.
Outlook
The 149th Yatra concludes Thursday night. The next test for this apparatus comes with Ganesh Chaturthi and Navratri later in the year, both of which draw comparable or larger crowds across Gujarat’s cities. Whether this year’s incident-free run holds will decide how much of the current tech spend on drones, facial recognition and anti-drone guns becomes a permanent baseline rather than a one-off.
Sources: Prokerala/IANS, Gujarat Samachar
This report was compiled and written with AI assistance from publicly reported sources, and reviewed for accuracy.