Starting next month, it will be mandatory for all devotees attending Bhasma Aarti at the Mahakal Temple in Ujjain to wear RFID bands. The move is designed to deter unauthorised entry and support logistics at the shrine. Temple authorities have stated that the installation of technology implements for the system—mobile application, computer systems, scanners, and printers—will be completed before the RFID service becomes operational in the first week of November. The RFID, or Radio-frequency Identification, system will use electromagnetic fields to automatically track tags attached to the bands worn by the devotees and send the data to a designated computer system for purposes of security, logistics, and management of services at the temple. Data readers for the RFID tags, generated along with tickets or permissions issued by temple authorities, will scan the tags to check the identity and time of entry for all devotees at the shrine. All entry points at the temple are being installed with flap barriers for this purpose. The flap barriers will only open for devotees with authorised tags. The early morning Bhasma Aarti at the temple, one of the 12 Jyotirlinga sites, is popular among devotees who throng the temple throughout the year.Sources in the temple city say that the move regulating entry to the temple comes in the wake of reports of local touts fleecing devotees with promises of early darshan and VIP services at the shrine.

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