Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s divine-grand Mahakumbh 25 event, where over 66 crore devotees took a dip of faith in 45 days, evoked appreciation not only in the country but from worldover.
The UP Police was also praised in the country and abroad for making this event safe. Its Integrated Command and Control Center (ICCC) played a key role in making this event safe from land to sky. This center controlled heavy crowds on the ground on one hand, while destroying over 60 lakh cyber attacks on the other.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s visionary approach to organizing Mahakumbh 25 in Prayagraj received global appreciation and the ICCC honoured with the SKOCH Gold Award. Prayagraj’s Mahakumbh 25 was counted among world’s largest human gatherings, where over 66 crore devotees in 45 days, extraordinary peak-footfall on days like Mauni Amavasya, temporary city spread over thousands of hectares and unprecedented logistics coordination was witnessed. Preparation for this mega event started one year earlier. In this, the Integrated Command and Control Center became the nerve center of “public-first” concern and crisis-management machinery operating on both ground and sky fronts.
Preparations for the Mahakumbh was not “event management” but system-engineering. The preparations started one year earlier from planning to ground implementation. This included table-top exercises, scenario-based testing and digital-twin simulation for crowd-overflow situations, etc. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s clear message was that devotees’ convenience, safe experience, and smooth operation of the fair should happen. For this, cutting-edge technology was deployed for public interest.
In the Mahakumbh, ICCC was designed like a central command hub that remained active 24 hours. It included crowd-management, public-safety, disaster-response, traffic-management and inter-agency coordination to real-time. This system included over 2,750 AI supported cameras, four operational ICCC units, over 400 personnel, 1920 call-center (50 operators every shift), jam-proof wireless grid, ANPR-based vehicle monitoring, VMD display, and AI chatbot “Kumbh Sah’AI’yak” in 11 languages for devotees’ assistance etc. This was the “single-point command” from where QRT dispatch, green-channel activation, railway-bus-stand inflow alert, and multi-departmental information-handover was run with zero-delay target.
Mahakumbh 25 was as big physically as its “digital-footprint” was. This digital dependency made it a high-value target for cyber attackers. Over 60 lakh malicious/suspicious cyber attacks were stopped during the 45-day event, whose IP traced from 25+ countries; attacks included DDoS, ransomware-type activities, DNS poisoning, SQL injection, spoofing, brute force, web-app attacks etc. This success was possible due to timely alerts from central agencies and prompt action by state police/system-integrators. Along with this, technical teams of IIT Kanpur and IIIT Prayagraj played a role in cyber-security assessment and on-ground support. STQC (MeitY) also made notable contributions through testing/quality-check of digital-infrastructure.
IPS Bhanu Bhaskar said active monitoring by 56 “cyber warriors” in Mahakumbh’s tech-deployment ensured “digital Kumbh” along with “digital safety”. Important thing was that cyber-defense was not considered only “IT-issue”, but seen directly connected with crowd-management, emergency-response and public-trust because even one successful defacement/DoS/hacking incident could create misinformation, panic and operational hindrance.
Strength of the ICCC model was more than “technology” – its inter-agency synchronization capability. Cooperation of police, administration, health, disaster-management, traffic, municipal-services, railway-coordination and technical/educational institutions is also important. Same cooperation-architecture was adopted for cyber-security too. Coordination mindset towards best practices like CERT-In government units’ guidelines, CISO-function, dedicated cyber-team and reporting/response-mechanism is visible.
IG Prem Gautam (then IG Range Prayagraj) obtained cooperation from many prestigious institutions/central agencies of the country to deal with potential weaknesses of digital infrastructure and cyber attacks which proved extremely useful. At field-level there was a massive deployment of 60,000+ trained personnel, while in ICCC “human-machine” partnership gave speed and accuracy to operations. Supervision of Mahakumbh ICCC was done by Bhanu Bhaskar (former ADG Prayagraj Zone), who received cooperation from senior officers/team (Tarun Gaba, Police Commissioner Prayagraj, Prem Gautam IG Range Prayagraj, DIG Mahakumbh Vaibhav Krishna). As “officer-in-charge”, Amit Kumar, IPS handled responsibility of operational command and technology-human integration.
Mahakumbh-25’s ICCC model was honored with SKOCH Gold Award 2025 at 105th SKOCH Summit. Then ADG Zone Prayagraj Bhanu Bhaskar was honored with this award by the Skoch committee which was received by then SP ICCC Amit Kumar. This award gives national recognition to UP Police’s tech-driven, citizen-centric initiatives in which ICCC was highlighted as “24×7 nerve centre”.