600 pandals operating illegally

There are about 600 illegal Ganesh pandals on Mumbai’s streets even as the Ganesh festival is running into its eighth day of celebration. With just three more days remaining for the festival to come to an end, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is yet to clear permissions for about 600 Ganesh pandals across the city.

While Ganesh mandals have alleged that the BMC’s ‘tedious procedure’ is responsible for delaying the permissions, the civic body maintains that it will fine the pandals illegally constructed on the street. However, to maintain the sanctity of the festival, this will be done only after the festival is over. Last year, the civic body sent notices to about 350 pandals, after the festival was over.

Civic officials claim that fining the mandals yields no outcome, as several of them default on their fines. This also becomes one of the grounds for rejection of permission during the next year.

Following the rules set by the BMC last year, all mandals are supposed to apply to the civic body for permissions a month before the festival. They are required to get clearances from the fire department, the traffic police, and the police. Clearances are given on the basis of pending dues as fines from the previous year, and submissions of floor plans of the pandal. This helps the civic body ensure that no pandal encroaches on the road, inconveniencing the traffic and pedestrians. However, a senior civic official said, “There is no mechanism to check if the pandals erected without the permissions are encroaching on the streets or not. We cannot remove them during the festival. So our motive of pedestrian convenience remains unaddressed in several cases.”

This year too, pandals have been erected in full glamour, even without permissions. Naresh Dahibavkar, President of the Brihanmumbai Sarvajanik Ganeshutsav Samanvay Samiti said, “We celebrate the festival as we should, without getting affected by the bureaucratic procedure. That can be dealt with later.”

This year, the BMC received about 2,500 applications for erecting pandals, of which it rejected around 500 applications, and cleared about 1,300 of them.