Uttar Pradesh Deploys AI Surveillance for Kanwar Yatra

Muzaffarnagar is a major transit point on the pilgrimage route. The Times of India reported on July 9 that the district administration planned more than 2,500 AI-enabled CCTV cameras across urban and rural stretches of the route. The report said the system would use facial recognition, crowd analytics and automatic number-plate recognition to generate real-time alerts, alongside aerial monitoring by drones.

AajTak separately reported roughly 2,500 AI-based cameras with face detection, crowd analysis and automatic alerts. Both reports described police stations along the route operating as local control rooms with representatives from police, health, electricity and sanitation departments. These were pre-event plans; the retrieved current report confirms AI-enabled surveillance across the state but does not independently verify that every planned Muzaffarnagar camera was installed.

ThePrint reported that around 4,000 police personnel, including Anti-Terrorism Squad, Provincial Armed Constabulary and flood-unit staff, were deployed in Muzaffarnagar. Heavy vehicles were barred from sections of the Delhi-Haridwar highway and Ganga Canal Road, with broader vehicle restrictions scheduled from August 4 through August 12.

The operation also includes medical camps, sanitation, lighting and traffic management. In Varanasi, temple arrangements included separate entry and exit gates, CCTV monitoring, medical facilities and e-rickshaws for elderly and disabled visitors, according to ThePrint.

For security and data practitioners, the deployment shows how fixed video, aerial feeds, field reporting and centralized coordination are being combined for a large public event. The retrieved reports do not disclose the camera vendors, model accuracy, false-alert rates, data-retention rules or privacy safeguards. Those details would be necessary to evaluate the system's technical performance and governance rather than only its scale.