Overview

• Ministers Sudivya Kumar Sonu, Deepika Pandey Singh and Sanjay Prasad Yadav inaugurated the fair at Dumma on the Jharkhand-Bihar border with traditional Vedic rituals.
• An AI-integrated mela control room now tracks crowd movements through 200 AI-based cameras, a traffic management system, face-recognition scanners, drones and an information chatbot.
• Authorities have set up tent cities, bathing rooms, toilets, medical camps and shuttle services along the Sultanganj-Deoghar route to serve an expected 50–60 lakh devotees.
• Deputy Commissioner Naman Priyesh suspended all VIP, VVIP and out-of-turn darshan privileges and barred touch worship of the Jyotirlinga, requiring holy water offerings via Argha.
• Pilgrims fetch Ganga water at Sultanganj and trek 108 km barefoot to Baba Baidyanath Dham, one of Lord Shiva’s twelve Jyotirlingas and Asia’s longest religious fair.