Page 37 - 15DEC2019E-5

FAITH

side, Nalla on the second and a railway
track on the third side. SECURITY OVERVIEW
The planners had also to grapple with
the fact that though the anticipated rush Eleven inner sectors for law and with QR code embedded data
of devotees was in million yet the town order and three inner sectors
had nearest four-lane roads 21 and 45 for heightened security Use of Artificial Intelligence-
Kilometres away and the broadest road based technology to strengthen
available was only 33-feet wide. This
required creation of infrastructure over Specialised duty verticals: the capacity of the force
the water bodies and the railway track to VVIP security, liaisoning and
facilitate movement. coordination, communication, State-of-the-art integrated
anti-terrorism, law and order, command and control centre
he Punjab Police devised the transport and logistics (ICCC) for surveillance,
traffic plan in a manner which monitoring as well as prompt
T excluded any chance of com-
motion caused by arrival of dig- High security identity creden- decision-making on critical
nitaries who included President tials for all the on-duty staff alerts and emergency situations
Ramnath Kovind, Vice-President
Venkhiah Naidu, Prime Minister Nar-
endra Modi and Chief Minister Captain were deployed but hidden from the Positioning System to ensure no laxity in
Amarinder Singh. public eye. The overall presence of 7000 duty. They were provided special tented
All were ushered in from the helipads police personnel employing zero arms accommodation equipped with all facili-
to the main venue and taken back from concept was in sync with the religious ties as the Punjab cops in general are not
the dedicated direction which did not sanctity of the event. About 1000 camera used to long duration of duty extended
cross the routes meant for the devotees. were operational including 500 installed over a fortnight in the present case.
The town became so stressed with rush by the police to keep an eye on every It was indeed very stressful for the
that it assumed roughly three time bigger movement. About 250 police patrol- police and civil administration to meet
size during the entire period of celebra- ling vehicles meant for live monitoring very high level of expectations and ex-
tions. The state government temporarily besides fire tenders, recovery vehicles actitude of performance given the social
hired 1000 acre land to create multiple and ambulances were part of the elabo- media and mainstream media scrutiny.
parking, pandal, secure vacant areas, rate security system. To facilitate public convenience and ef-
helipads and temporary Police Lines. For the first time in the state police fective security, the planners made opti-
Given the heightened security per- history, about 3500 cops on duty in and mum use of technology. For the first time
ception, anti-terrorist and special squads around the town were put under Global and over an unprecedented extended
period, drones were used for planning
surveys; later surveillance and monitor-
ing. The massive arrangements of course
involved huge cost but again the credit
goes to those at the helm of planning
and execution that the funds spent were
worth the effort. The government allo-
cated over 10 Crore budget to the police
of which little over 8 Crore was spent
and the rest returned to the government
kitty. Notably, 60 percent of the assets
created as part of the infrastructure out
of the police budget are reusable.
“I don’t say it was my brainchild yet
I take pride in creating the concept. My
greatest satisfaction is that we have set
up a organisational benchmark for our
own police for future events of this scale,”
summed up IGP Naunihal Singh..
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