Drones to keep vigil on Ganga pollution, containment zones

Varanasi: Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath launched four drones in Varanasi on Tuesday morning for curbing pollution in Ganga, keeping a vigil in containment zones and delivering medicines and other essential articles to the needy.
The officials displayed drone operations before CM at the Community Health Centre in Shivpur and informed him that these drones can move at a speed of 10-12 m/sec and can fly to a height of 120 metre.
Varanasi municipal commissioner Gaurang Rathi said, “We have arranged four types of drones for efficient monitoring during the second wave of Covid-19 in partnership with Garuda Aerospace Private Limited, Chennai, under the Smart City project. These drones equipped with high resolution cameras will help in monitoring river Ganga stream and ghats along it.”
The videos and photographs captured by the drones will enable the officials to keep vigil and will help in judicious deployment of personnel and resources and make further strategies.
In case of emergencies, these drones will also deliver medicines and other essentials in containment zones.
The drones are equipped with public address system and can be used to relay administrative orders and spreading awareness in containment zones, besides surveillance in containment zones, said Rathi.
“These advanced drones are GPS enabled and can hence also help in medicine kit distribution and can in fact deliver them in the hands of beneficiaries at their registered address,” he added.
During the lockdown last year, officials had carried out sanitisation of more than 2,750 acre with the help of drones. Rathi also received CM’s appreciation for using drones efficiently for these purposes.
The drone used in sanitisation has a 10 litre tank which is filled with sodium hypochlorite solution, said officials. Drones are used for sanitisation in containment zones where taking heavy machine is not possible.
The smart city officials said surveillance through drones will help check contamination of the holy river. In the past fortnight, many bodies were found floating in river Ganga and had created a row. Massive patrolling had been started and police teams were deployed on boats to prevent immersion of bodies in river and administration made arrangements for helping families lacking resources in proper cremation of bodies.