Ahead of the Maha Kumbh Mela, sadhus take out a Juna Akhara procession on a pontoon bridge laid across the Ganga for the festival in Prayagraj.
| Photo Credit: AFP
In the run-up to the Kumbh Mela slated to take place in January, the Railways has introduced jackets with QR scanners for volunteers in a bid to digitise ticket bookings for passengers.
“During the Mahakumbh, North Central Railway officials from Prayagraj division will be deputed on special duty donning a fluorescent green jacket embedded with a QR code at the back,” railway officials said.
“Devotees can scan the QR code and download a mobile app — Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS) — which will help them book unreserved tickets without having to wait in queues,” the officials said.
Officials said that virtual booking and payment for tickets will ease crowding as lakhs of passengers throng multiple railway stations in Prayagraj during Kumbh. This is over and above 560 ticketing counters that will be capable of doling out 10 lakh tickets daily.
The Railways has also launched a Mahakumbh Rail Seva 2025 app and web portal to provide information on trains, guest houses, helpline numbers and so on. There will be 28 guest houses for devotees with a capacity to accommodate 1.3 lakh devotees.
A toll free number 1800-4199-139 has also been activated since November 1. From January 1, this helpline will be operational 24×7 with call operators adept at various languages, including Odia, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi and Bengali.
Announcements in Railways will be in 12 languages — Hindi, English, Gujarati, Marathi, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, Bengali, Odia, Punjabi and Assamese. The Railways is running over 10,000 regular trains and over 3,000 special trains during this period.
Published – December 31, 2024 11:07 pm IST
