60 crore in Mahakumbh? It's hype with eye on UP polls: Keen BJP supporter in Amit Shah's constituency

As the Mahakumbh drew to a close, during my daily walk, I met a veteran BJP supporter—a neighbor with whom we would often share dinner in a group. An amicable person, the first thing he asked me, as he was about to take the lift to his flat, was, "How many people do you think must have participated in the holy dip?" He then stopped by to talk—which we did for a full half-hour, cutting into my walk time.

I had already done some analysis by uploading drone-taken images to two different AI sites, so I counter-questioned, "Sixty crore seems highly exaggerated, but what is your take?"

This gentleman, who had just returned from a walk and had bought a Hindi newspaper about 500 meters from our housing society, replied, "Absolutely… but I have made my calculations."

And this is what he told me: The UP government "appears to have counted those who live in Prayagraj and bathe twice a day… Let me make a rough estimate. That would mean that, daily, approximately 30 to 40 lakh people take a 'holy dip' in the Ganga at home."

Then he continued, "I added those who come from outside. They would stay in the city for at least a full day and take a holy dip at least twice. If they stay longer, they take a dip two more times a day. So, each time these people bathe, they must have been counted. That is how they arrived at 60 crore."

But how many people does he actually believe took the holy dip? He asked me directly, "Did you go to the Mahakumbh?"

I said, "No."

He asked the same question to another person who had joined our conversation, who also replied in the negative. Then he continued, "I also didn't go... There are 2,000 people living in our housing society. I doubt if more than 10-15% of them would have gone to the Mahakumbh."

Only 10-15%? Ours is a largely pro-BJP housing society, part of Union Home Minister Amit Shah's constituency. Still, so few? I posed this question, and he replied, "Yes… You see, it's a political hype created by UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath with an eye on the upcoming UP elections, scheduled for October this year. Not without reason, there is a political slugfest around the Mahakumbh."

Being from UP himself and knowing every bit of Allahabad (now Prayagraj) quite well, he explained, "If Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav, even after taking the holy dip, called the Ganga water dirty and warned that it might cause illness or death, Yogi hit back, saying vultures get only dead bodies and pigs get dirt—making Akhilesh furious."

He continued, "My rough estimate is that no more than 30 crore people have been to the Mahakumbh—half of Yogi’s estimate. Most of the attendees are from areas neighboring Prayagraj, mainly from UP, followed by Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttarakhand."

Explaining the "political hype" around the Mahakumbh, this BJP supporter said, "The claim that this Mahakumbh is a once-in-144-years event was widely propagated, attracting people from across India. Even people from faraway South India reached the Mahakumbh in large numbers… Frankly, I don't understand this 144-year claim. It seems like a political move with an eye on the UP elections."

I used two AI sites to estimate the number of people in drone images of the Mahakumbh—a method reportedly used by the Yogi government to justify the 60 crore estimate, which is nearly half of India's population.

Using different methodologies, the first AI estimated that, assuming a density of 3 to 5 persons per square meter, the number of people in the image must be between 18,000 and 30,000.

Another AI estimate, based on a different image, identified three zones—high, medium, and low density—where there were approximately 33,750, 32,400, and 18,750 people, respectively, bringing the headcount to 84,900.

I then uploaded a third drone image, and this is what the AI told me:

"Based on refined segmentation, approximately 17.25% of the visible area is occupied by the crowd. Given an estimated real-world area of 1 square kilometer (1,000,000 square meters), the occupied crowd area is around 172,500 square meters."

It added: "Using a density estimate of 4–6 people per square meter, the refined headcount estimate ranges between 690,000 to 1.03 million people. This refined estimate accounts for a more accurate segmentation of the crowd."