Thirty thousand on a single lane: Meraj-ul-Alam at the shrine on the Dal Lake foreshore
You are the Sub-Divisional Police Officer for a shrine township on the Dal Lake foreshore in Srinagar. The night of 27 Rajab (Meraj-ul-Alam) falls this week and the shrine, which houses the Moi-e-Muqqadas, will stay open from 8 pm to 3 am. The Auqaf committee expects 30,000 visitors, including about 6,000 women and elderly persons. The complex has three gates: Gate 1 (main, 12 feet wide, carrying the only shoe-deposit counters, three of them), Gate 2 (8 feet) and Gate 3 (6 feet, normally used for supplies). The approach is a single 2.5 km lane from the main road, with no alternate route. Safe throughput is 35 persons per minute at Gate 1, 20 at Gate 2 and 12 at Gate 3; each shoe counter handles 15 persons per minute. The forecast is −2 °C with snow after midnight. The Auqaf committee asks that no gate be closed during the night, and a heritage walk for 300 tourists is already scheduled at 8 am along the foreshore. Two social-media posts since afternoon claim there was a fire in the shrine's store room; the committee denies it.
1. Work out whether the crowd can clear the gates in the seven-hour window, and identify the real bottleneck.
Read the worked answer
Gate capacity: 35 + 20 + 12 = 67 persons per minute. Time to admit 30,000 = 30,000 ÷ 67 = 447.8 minutes = 7 hours 28 minutes. The window is 8 pm to 3 am = 420 minutes. Required rate = 30,000 ÷ 420 = 71.4 per minute. So the gates are short by about 4.4 persons per minute, or 28 minutes over the window.
The real bottleneck is not the gates - it is the shoes. Three counters × 15 persons per minute = 45 per minute. 30,000 ÷ 45 = 666.7 minutes = 11 hours 7 minutes. On this arithmetic the last worshipper is still at the counter well after the gates close, and the queue on the single lane becomes a crush risk, not merely a delay.
Fixes, in order of effect:
- Add two shoe counters (five × 15 = 75 per minute → 400 minutes = 6 hours 40 minutes), and post volunteers to speed the token system.
- Let worshippers carry footwear in a cloth bag after the committee's clearance - this is a religious-practice decision for the Auqaf committee, not for the police.
- Stagger arrivals by time slot through the committee's announcement network, so the peak 10 pm–midnight band is flattened.
- Open Gate 3 for general admission, keeping a separate channel for emergencies.
- Plan the exit as carefully as the entry: 30,000 leaving between 2 am and 4 am on the same 2.5 km lane is the bigger crush risk.
2. How do you deal with the three constraints: the committee's refusal to close gates, the 8 am heritage walk, and the fire rumour?
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1. Gates - respect the request, restructure the flow. No gate is shut during the night. Instead make the flow one-way: Gate 1 entry only, Gate 2 becomes exit-only after 1 am, Gate 3 reserved for ambulances, fire tenders and the elderly/divyang shuttle. This satisfies the committee and solves the head-on collision between incoming and outgoing crowds on the single lane.
2. Heritage walk - defer, do not cancel. At 8 am the lane is still discharging the overnight crowd and the road is icy. Recommend to the Tourism Department that the walk start at 10:30 am and be rerouted along the far side of the foreshore, away from the shrine lane; offer police facilitation then. Cancelling would cause avoidable friction; deferring costs nothing.
3. Fire rumour - verify fast, correct publicly, do not gag. Immediately have the Fire and Emergency Service and the committee jointly inspect the store room, then issue a short factual correction through the committee's own channels, the police social media handle and a public address announcement at Gate 1. A visible fire tender parked at Gate 3 does more to calm rumour than any statement. Arrest or FIR only if there is material to show the posts were deliberately false and likely to cause alarm - a police officer cannot treat rumour control as a licence to detain people, and a heavy-handed arrest at a shrine on a holy night will itself become the incident.
Deployment to match: women police at Gate 2 and the women's enclosure; SDRF and a fire tender at Gate 3; medical post with oxygen and blankets for the elderly in −2 °C; lost-persons desk with a public address system; anti-sabotage sweep before opening; metal detectors at Gate 1 only, so the other gates keep their throughput.
3. Set out what you must get right about this shrine and the local religious calendar, so that the plan is not merely arithmetic.
Read the worked answer
The place. The shrine stands on the western shore of Dal Lake in Srinagar and houses the Moi-e-Muqqadas, a relic displayed to the public only on selected occasions. It is administered by the Jammu and Kashmir Waqf Board, with a local Auqaf committee that carries the community's trust. The police role is to protect the congregation from outside - inside the shrine, the committee's volunteers manage the ritual.
The calendar. Meraj-ul-Alam falls on 27 Rajab; other heavy-congregation nights are Shab-e-Qadr in Ramadan and 12 Rabi-ul-Awwal (the Prophet's birthday). Planning must begin days earlier, not on the night, and must be repeated for each of these occasions.
Sensitivities that decide whether the plan works:
- Footwear is removed before entering; the shoe counters are a religious requirement, not a convenience, which is why their throughput governs the whole design.
- Worshippers perform wuzu (ablution) before ziyarat; water points and drainage must be functioning in sub-zero weather.
- A separate enclosure and women police for women visitors; the elderly need seating and a shorter queue.
- No photography of the relic; officers should not film inside the shrine.
- The traditional order of ziyarat is set by the committee; police should not reorder queues in a way that breaks it.
Coordination to activate: the Deputy Commissioner and SDM, the Waqf Board and Auqaf committee, SDRF, Fire and Emergency Service, the Health Department, the municipal body for lighting and sanitation, and the Tourism Department for the heritage walk. A single joint control room with the committee's representative in it is worth more than an extra platoon on the lane.