DIVINE JOURNEY Large Number Of Clay Idols Replace Polluting Versions This Year It seems Ganesha Utsav has turned green to a large extent as the state witnessed the largest number of eco-friendly idols replacing the usual PoP version. “This year’s Ganesha Utsav was the most eco-friendly festival we witnessed in the last 10 years. For instance, in Rajkot all public Ganesha festival organizers switched to clay idols while no less than 90 % of the idols were ecofriendly in Surat,” said Manmohan Singh, president of the Gujarat Ganesha Utsav Association. In Ahmedabad, One lakh people installed Ganesha idols at homes and there were 2,000 public Ganesha pujas. Of these, 75 % of the idols were made of ecofriendly material. In Gujarat, 9,000 public Ganesha Utsavs were organized this year,’’ added Singh. “Each year we give awards to the best puja organizers and ecofriendly idols. This time it went to an eight-foot Ganesha idol of Kasturbanagar in Saraspur. This was one of the largest eco-friendly idol which the city has witnessed till date,” said Singh. It was closely followed by Dagdu Seth Ganesha puja organizers of Bapunagar, who had installed a seven-foot idol. These idols were immersed in Sabarmati river on Wednesday. On the other hand, there are others who haveensuredthatthePoPidols are not sent for immersion. At Vasant Chowk in Bhadra, Pratap Jagtap has decided to give the PoP idol back to its maker – Vijay Nayak – who has promised to keep the Ganesha idol in his prayer room. “Usually we hand over the PoP idol to devotees, while a smaller clay replica is taken for visarjan. This time the idol-makers shall take it back. In any case, we keep a tab on the person who takes the idol and make sure that the family that takes the PoP idol does not discard it later,” said Pratap. Student drowns during visarjan One boy drowned while another was saved during Ganesh immersion in Panchmahal district on Wednesday. The incident occurred when the some residents of Halol were immersing Ganesh idol in Vadaa talav in Halol. Some boys jumped in the lake during the procession. One boy, Bhargav Pandit, a resident of Halol drowned in the lake. Pandit, 20, was studying engineering. Another boy, too got stuck in the lake but was rescued. GPCB collects samples Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB) officials fanned out at 12 different river ghats inSurat to collect water samples on Wednesday. Samples were collected two days prior to the visarjan. Fresh samples collected on the immersion day will be sent for laboratory testing to know the exact amount of pollution. This year, however, the GPCB and the city administration have put a ban on the immersion of POP idols in the river. All PoP idols were immersed at artificial ponds set up at Dumas and many were immersed in the sea.
Posted on: Thu, 19 Sep 2013 03:05:10 +0000
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