The roads of Allahabad city got clogged again on Tuesday as devotees made one last dash for the Mahakumbh that will end on Wednesday with the sixth and last holy bath on Mahashivaratri.

Eyewitnesses said traffic jams stretched up to 20km at all entry points to the city on roads that connect Allahabad to Varanasi, Ayodhya, Kaushambi, Chitrakoot and Pratapgarh.

All vehicles ferrying common devotees are being stopped outside the city. Innumerable people can be seen squatting along the roads, cooking meals on brick stoves or taking rest. Many are camping at the temporary parking lots inside the city and in the Mahakumbh area which are empty as cars are not being allowed.

Police are also preventing locals from taking out their four-wheelers.

“The police have asked us not to take out our cars. We can go to the city for urgent work but we are either having to walk or ride scooters. Thousands of devotees carrying their luggage on their shoulders and heads are walking towards the Sangam,” said Swaroop Kumar, a resident of Tagore Town, about 20km from the Mela area.

Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath has appealed to devotees not to rush towards the Sangam — the confluence of the Ganga, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati — but take the holy dip at the spots along the river that are closest to their camps. There are 42 ghats along the 12km stretch of the river that is part of the Kumbh area.

According to the chief minister, 64 crore devotees have so far taken a bath at the Kumbh, which began on January 13.

Amit Kumar, the nodal officer of the Integrated Control and Command System at the Kumbh, said: “We are prepared to maintain order at the Mela. There will be a quick response in case of any eventuality.”

Vaibhav Krishna, the deputy inspector-general of the Kumbh, said: “We have declared the Mela area a no-vehicle zone and appeal to devotees to park their vehicles at specified places. The Akshayavat area will be closed on Mahashivaratri.”

Akshayavat is an ancient fig tree, which the Hindus worship.

The complaints of mismanagement and the administration’s perceived lack of concern for common devotees lingered on the penultimate day.

Sakshat Desai, 60, a devotee from Gandhinagar in Gujarat, was quoted as saying by local reporters: “I saw VIP vehicles moving freely in the Kumbh area with police escorts but we have to walk 15km to reach the river bank.”

Bollywood actor Raveena Tandon, left, and her daughter Rasha Thadani pray after ritualist dips at Sangam, the confluence of rivers the Ganges, the Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati during the Maha Kumbh festival, in Prayagraj, India, Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025. PTI photo

“The government appears more interested in making rich businessmen, powerful politicians and popular filmstars happy than providing basic facilities to the true devotees, a large number of whom are aged above 60,” Desai added.

“Unfortunately, the ruling party’s leaders start abusing those who speak about the problems of common devotees at the Mahakumbh,” he said.

Ridiculing his detractors for questioning the “mismanagement” at the Mahakumbh and the two stampedes — one in the Mela area on January 29 during Mauni Amavasya and the other at New Delhi railway station during a rush to catch a Kumbh-bound train on February 15 — Adityanath said in the Assembly on Tuesday: “Someone correctly said that people got whatever they were searching for at the Mahakumbh. The vultures got only corpses.”

The BJP leader had said in the House on Monday: “Vultures got bodies and pigs got dirt there (the Mahakumbh). Sensitive people found beautiful pictures of relationships and believers received punya. The bhakts got God.”

“I liked this apt comment on social media about those who had been making adverse comments about the Mahakumbh. He (the social media user) said that you look at the activities of Leftists and socialists in the past one-and-a-half months (during the Mahakumbh) and you will find them only spewing poison,” Adityanath said.

The official death tolls of the January 29 and February 15 stampedes were 30 and 18, respectively, but the actual figures are believed to be much higher.

Reacting to Adityanath’s remarks, Samajwadi Party veteran Mata Prasad Pandey, the leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, told reporters: “There was Kans, a king who feared that he would be finished if Lord Krishna was born. The same is the condition of the CM.”