Maha Kumbh Nagar, Allahabad: Crowd density at this tent city had reached unprecedented levels as several millions descended for a mass bathing Hindu ritual on the banks of India’s longest river Ganga here on Monday.

While government had estimated 30 million to gather for Mauni Amaswya bathing day, overwhelmed officials are unable to put a number to the humongous turnout of devotees who arrived from far-flung corners of India.

Going by the government estimates of 30 million, Monday’s turnout translates to more than two per cent of entire India’s population landing in Allahabad that has just 1.2 million inhabitants. There is no dispute that Maha Kumbh Mela is the largest gathering of humanity and that Mauni Amaswaya bathing day on Sunday was the busiest.

But senior officials are unable to say exactly how many people were present during the 24-hour period from Saturday midnight to Sunday midnight when the bathing frenzy was at its peak.

“I will not be able to give you exact numbers and a head count is possible only through a scientific method,” Maha Kumbh Nagar’s top officer Mani Prasad Mishra told Gulf News. He also admitted that government estimates are debatable.

Security officials at Maha Kumbh Nagar, however, work on visual assessment of crowds on the main bathing days. Following a simple thumb-rule of spotting the land, officials perched on high watch towers press the panic button when they are unable to see the ground. This is then communicated to officials on the ground who take a series of steps to divert crowd from Sangam, the epicentre of this mass bathing ritual. One such step is to divert arriving crowds into a giant jig-saw holding area that tricks up to 50,000 people into walking for three hours.

From the media tower at Sangam on Sunday morning, it was difficult to see the ground and a sea humanity was visible in all directions as far as eyes could see. There were too many people in the 2,000-hectare tent city that can hold only 50,000 people per sq km or seven times more than the population density of Singapore with 7,000 people per sq km. To the journalists and officials present on Sunday, it was clear that even this density of 50,000 per sq km was breached before dawn on Sunday. Again, if one has to get a sense of how many people were present here, it won’t be an exaggeration to say that six times the population of the UAE arrived in Allahabad over a period of 24 hours.