Police to geotag all Ganesh pandals in city

Hyderabad: In order to ensure smooth conduct of Ganesh festival in the city, the Hyderabad police have decided to geotag all Ganesh pandals. The city police will monitor them and prevent any untoward incident during the upcoming festival.
According to sources, the police have decided to beef up security, deploying over 24,000 police personnel. Sources said that elaborate arrangements were being made for the smooth conduct of Ganesh immersion slated on September 5.

“Over 24,000 police personnel will be deployed as part of security measures. The personnel from Rapid Action Force and Central Reserve Police Force will also be on duty during the festival,” a news agency quoted Hyderabad Police Commissioner M Mahendar Reddy as saying. All Ganesh pandals would be geotagged in the city and this system would help in monitoring on how the police officials were supervising the arrangements during the festival period, he said.

This would also enable to know about the visits of police officials to the pandals and also about the organisers, Reddy said. “QR codes will also be provided to the pandals to verify their arrangements,” he said adding that a review meeting was held on Friday with officials of different departments, representatives of Bhagyanagar Ganesh Utsav Samiti and other organisations to take stock of the arrangements made for an ‘incident free’ Ganesh immersion, he said.

“Lakhs of people participate in Ganesh Visarjan. In order to ensure that Ganesh immersion is done in a peaceful atmosphere, all security arrangements are being done,” Reddy said, adding that measures had also been taken up to cover all procession routes with CCTV cameras.