NEW DELHI, Feb 7: India's government said on Friday that more than 420 million pilgrims have ritually bathed at the world's largest religious festival, estimates organising authorities say are calculated using artificial intelligence and surveillance cameras.
It is not possible to independently verify the mind-boggling figure -- more than the population of the United States and Canada combined -- which is a staggering statistic even for the world's most populous nation of 1.4 billion people.
"More than 420 million devotees took a dip in the holy Triveni Sangam," the government's Press Information Bureau said, referring to the confluence of the Ganges, Yamuna, and mythical Saraswati rivers.
The Kumbh Mela, a six-week-long Hindu celebration of prayer and bathing held every 12 years in the northern city of Prayagraj, has more than two weeks yet to run, ending on February 26.
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Religion and politics are deeply intertwined in India, and critics say that the festival is being promoted to burnish the credentials of Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who himself took a ritual dip on Wednesday.
Modi's close ally Yogi Adityanath, also from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is a firebrand monk and chief minister of Utter Pradesh state, where the festival is taking place.
The organisers say that they are using a network of cameras and overhead drones, with AI systems crunching data to calculate the number of devotees -- and manage crowds.
But that did not prevent a deadly stampede on January 29 that killed at least 30 people and injured 90 others.
The deaths took the sheen off Adityanath and his government's claims of stellar management of the event.
Officials insisted for hours that no one was seriously injured, despite graphic television footage from the scene.
The festival is rooted in Hindu mythology, a battle between deities and demons for control of a pitcher containing the nectar of immortality.
Pilgrims believe that the ritual bathing helps them attain salvation.
