This story is from November 27, 2016

Karantaka’s Laksha deepotsava to get a ‘Helping Hand’

Karantaka’s Laksha deepotsava to get a ‘Helping Hand’
<p>Representative image.</p><p><br></p>
NASHIK: After ensuring the safety of citizens during this year’s Kumbh Mela and last year’s Chennai floods, the ‘Helping Hand’ mobile application has now been selected for the Laksha Deepotsava, a religious gathering in Dharmasthala, Karnataka.
The six-day festival dedicated to Lord Shiva started on Thursday with more than 20 lakh devotees from all over the world visiting the place.
The Helping Hand app will help to manage the crowd and ensure the safety of women.
“The Helping Hand App is completely offline and does not require any use of the internet. When you tap the button on the App, it sends SMSs seeking urgent help to the persons listed on your emergency contact list along with your GPS location,” said Kaushal Bag, a student of KK Wagh Institute of Engineering who developed this App along with his five friends.
Since its launch on July 31, last year, the application has been downloaded in New Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and other states.
The app was most useful during the devastating floods of Chennai, where around 20,000 were people. People from Tamil Nadu made optimum use of the app when there was no other medium of connectivity available,” Bag said. Officials of the Karnataka Government who were on emergency services at Chennai during the time, noticed the brilliance of the app and asked Bag’s team to help manage the crowd during C.
“As Dharmasthala prepares for the biggest annual event, efforts are on to ensure the safety of thousands of pilgrims. Enthusiastic youths from the city are bringing an offline cellular system to find heavily crowded places that will need better management and to locate missing persons. A five-member team under the leadership of Bag is on the job to execute the mission,” an official statement released by the reception committee chief of the festival, Dr D Veerendra Heggade said.

The team will set up eight electro-magnetic computers in Dharmasthala, with the help of which a missing person could be traced. The missing person will be tracked by the cellphone. The computers will be able to track the missing person even if their cellphone is switched off.
Deeptesh Morey, Khemraj Ahire, Chinmay Mahajan, Ankita Deshpande and Purushottam Chinchore will join Bag to Dharmasthala.
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