Ahmedabad’s police have built a technology-heavy security plan for the 149th Jagannath Rath Yatra on July 16, deploying an AI-based facial recognition system called PINAC, a new elephant-tracking tool named Gajrakshak, and anti-drone guns along the roughly 18-km procession route, according to The Hans India. Deputy Chief Minister Harsh Sanghavi chaired the planning review, attended by DGP G.S. Malik and Ahmedabad Police Commissioner Anupam Singh Gahlaut.
What the technology does
PINAC, Ahmedabad police’s existing criminal-tracking software, is being extended for real-time facial recognition along the route, cross-referencing camera feeds against police databases. Gujarat Samachar has reported separately that the force has also been building a mobile-app version of PINAC for frontline officers, part of a broader push to put the tool in daily use rather than reserving it for large events. The Gajrakshak system, used for the first time this year, tracks the location and vital signs of the elephants that walk in the procession, a response to past concerns about animal welfare and crowd safety when elephants react to noise or crowding. Anti-drone guns and jammer teams are meant to intercept unauthorised aerial devices over the crowd, while the Pratiraksha app runs Aadhaar-based identity checks on truck operators and akhada organisers taking part.
Why the scale of this matters
The Rath Yatra draws hundreds of thousands of people through Ahmedabad’s old city, a dense, narrow-laned area that is difficult to secure with checkpoints alone. Security planning for the event has escalated steadily over the past decade, following incidents elsewhere in India where large religious gatherings turned into stampede or terror-threat scenarios. This year’s plan follows closely on the Gujarat Anti-Terrorism Squad’s arrest of eight suspected Jaish-e-Mohammed operatives ahead of the Yatra, reported by this outlet on July 8, which likely sharpened the emphasis on aerial and identity-verification measures.
What it means for Ahmedabad residents
For the roughly 18 kilometres of route between Jamalpur and Saraspur, residents and pilgrims will be under continuous facial-recognition surveillance for the day, a level of monitoring that is currently exceptional rather than routine in the city. Police frame this as proportionate given the crowd size and past threats, but it also means Ahmedabad is a live testing ground for surveillance technology that could plausibly become permanent infrastructure once agencies own the systems and see them work at scale. Neither the state nor Ahmedabad police has published a policy on how long PINAC footage from the Yatra will be retained or who can access it after the event, a gap worth watching as more Indian cities adopt similar tools for festivals and processions.
Outlook
The immediate test comes on July 16, when the systems will be judged on whether they prevent disruption without becoming visible obstacles to the pilgrims and vendors who depend on the Yatra’s smooth conduct. Beyond that day, the more durable question is whether Ahmedabad formalises rules for how long this surveillance data lives and who can use it, since technology deployed for one high-profile event has a track record of staying in place well after the event ends.
Sources: The Hans India, Gujarat Samachar
This report was written with AI assistance from the publicly reported sources linked here; each fact was cross-checked against at least two of them.