Immersions spill on to Sunday

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Contrary to the claims of police, the Ganesh idols immersion process in Hussainsagar could not be completed by midnight. By the time the last two idols from Chilkalguda and Ziaguda were immersed, it was 4 pm on Sunday. Though the heavy rain on Saturday night was one of the reasons for the immersion process stretching up to Sunday evening, the closing down of the entry to the NTR Marg by the cops before 10 am due to the Telangana march led to further delay.

The closure of NTR Marg meant that only the upper Tank Bund was available for immersion. The delay also threw up conflicting views among officials. While some said the delay was due to the police shifting their focus to the T-march from midnight itself as a result of which immersions took a back seat, the other section felt that it was a strategy on the part of the police to delay immersion so that T activists could be confined to the Necklace road and not allowed on upper Tank Bund.

However, the pandal organisers who spent the night on the vehicles on which they came along with the idols, said that accidents in Chilkalguda and Ziaguda, and the falling of trees delayed their move towards Hussainsagar. It may be mentioned here that a long row of vehicles with Ganesh idols were still waiting for their turn at 1 pm on Sunday. The long row of Ganesh idol vehicles extended up to Narayanaguda flyover on one side of the road, and up to MJ Market on the other side of the road.

The super-long proceedings and the T-march appeared to have its impact on the Ganesh immersion. The celebrants looked tired, and very few people turned up to see the idols. The city generated an additional 700 tonnes of garbage on account of the immersion of Ganesh idols. GHMC additional commissioner L. Vandan Kumar said the city generates 3,300 tonnes of garbage a day, but the quantity was over 4,000 tonnes on Saturday. Meanwhile, the Buddha Purnima Project Authority (BPPA), a wing of HMDA, started an exercise on Sunday to remove idols from Hussainsagar.