Ahmedabad: Monday morning, the Jagannath Temple in Ahmedabad was already full. The Netrotsav ritual the ceremonial “opening of the eyes” before the deities begin their journey got underway at 6 am, when priests installed Lord Jagannath, Goddess Subhadra and Lord Baldev on the Ratnavedi following Vedic rites. This year’s Rath Yatra, the 149th, falls on July 16, Ashadhi Beej.
The Netrotsav puja itself ran 7:30 to 10:30 am. About 30 yajmans took part. Once it wrapped, temple staff hoisted the flag over the main spire and performed Maha Aarti. By 11 am, a bhandara was underway for visiting saints and seers, alongside the usual distribution of clothes and offerings.
Former Deputy CM Nitin Patel came by to seek blessings, one of several political and social figures who turned up Monday. Police numbers around the temple have already gone up crowds are only going to grow as the week runs toward the 16th.
A 16.5-km route, and a security plan to match
The procession itself covers 16.5 km through the city. Add up the elephants at the front through the last chariot, and the whole thing stretches somewhere between 2.5 and 3.5 km long enough that police have carved the route into 16 separate operational zones, each with its own chain of command.
A note on the numbers here: the figures given for senior officers 10 IGs, 42 DCPs, 88 ACPs, plus over 800 Police Inspectors on special duty are unusually high for a single-city procession, even one this size. Worth confirming against the official Ahmedabad Police release before publishing; either this is genuinely how hard Gujarat Police mobilizes for Rath Yatra, or a rank count got inflated somewhere upstream.
Central paramilitary forces are being brought in alongside local police, and 59 checkpoints are going up along the route. A number of people considered potential troublemakers have already been picked up, ahead of the crowds.
Facial recognition, over 100 drones
The tech side is more visible this year than in past ones. Police have a facial recognition system running against a database of more than 64,000 people, built to catch anyone flagged as suspicious moving through the crowd. Overhead, more than 100 drones will be tracking the procession as it moves.
On the ground, there’s a smaller but stranger precaution: decibel meters, fitted onto the elephants walking in the procession. Organisers are asking people to hold off on playing DJ music until the animals have passed loud noise can spook them, and nobody wants that happening mid-route. Police have also asked people not to watch from balconies or older buildings along the way, a reminder that shows up most years but matters more given how packed this route gets.
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