Delhi Police Commissioner Rakesh Asthana along with Special Commissioner of Police Satish Golcha and DCP New Delhi Deepak Yadav visited the Rajpath area to review the security arrangement ahead of Republic Day.
Security arrangement has been tightened by deploying 50,000 security personnel and a central control room has also been set up with over 500 CCTV cameras fitted with Artificial Intelligence facilitating facial recognition to avoid any untoward incident.
While the threat not only remains in-ground, the national capital has been converted into a no-fly zone like flying of drones, UAVs, hot air balloons has also been prohibited. Anti-drone teams have also been put in place in order to check for any unattended flying objects in the national capital’s airspace.
For the first time in 75 years, the Republic Day parade will not start at the scheduled time of 10 a.m. and will begin 30 minutes after the scheduled time. The Republic Day Parade will start at 10:30 a.m. instead of 10 am, the Defence Ministry informed during a media briefing.
Further, Republic Media Network has learnt that homage will be paid to security personnel who lost their lives in Jammu and Kashmir before the Parade commences.
Further, for the first time ever, special invitations will be rolled out for underprivileged people who usually don’t get to witness the 26 January parade.
No foreign chief guests, however, from Central Asian countries will be present for the Republic Day parade due to the pandemic. Earlier, the government had sent invitations to the Heads of State of five Central Asian countries, however, the plans have now been cancelled.
“With regards to tackling drones and other such objects like UAVs, the Delhi Police is working along with Defence Research Development Organisation and National Security Guard to tackle the same. We are keeping a close watch on such activities and the Delhi airspace specifically after the No Fly orders have been passed,” DCP New Delhi Deepak Yadav informed.
Delhi police is also coordinating with the neighbouring states for precise arrangements as well, Yadav added.
Verification of the people staying in hotels in the nearby areas are also taking place. Central Vistas construction is one of the major challenges before the security agencies and hence the verification of the construction workers is being done again so as to leave no stone unturned in keeping the Republic Day parade to go on smoothly.