Civic body goes all out to manage crowds at site

Mumbai: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) undertook precautionary measures to manage the lakhs of followers who gathered at Chaitya Bhoomi to pay tribute to Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar on his 62nd death anniversary. The civic body also made provisions to accommodate them in nearby BMC-run schools. More than 100 people were kept in schools at Dadar and Shivaji Park. For the first time, the civic body made arrangements for crowd management at Shivaji Park and adjoining areas.

Every year, more than 20 lakh people visit the Dadar Chaitya Bhoomi on the occasion of Dr Ambedkar’s death anniversary.

This time around, the BMC set up over 100 stalls to look into fire safety and disaster management. There were  200-odd mobile toilets, water tankers, utility vehicles and fire engines. Adequate arrangements had ben made, including 10 control rooms, to guide visitors with nearly 750 round-the-clock workers at Chaitya Bhoomi and Dadar Chowpatty beach.

Talking to The Asian Age, BMC officer in charge S.S. Surve said, “Like every year, this year too, we deployed 80 doctors, 15 ambulances and several fire engines close at hand. Over 10 control rooms had been set up, and the entire memorial was under round-the-clock CCTV surveillance.”

Apart from hundreds of policemen, more than 1,000 volunteers had been deployed around the Dadar Chowpatty area. The Mumbai police claims to have geared up for crowd management and proper traffic flow.

Hundreds of thousands of people, who had arrived on Wednesday, stayed overnight at civic schools on Bhavani Shankar Road.