Heavy rains, high tide delay Ganpati visarjan

Mumbai: Devotees who brought home Lord Ganesha idols for one-and-a-half days carried out the visarjan (immersion) at the Dadar and Juhu beaches, albeit with delay due to heavy rain and high tide.

While immersion processions began at 4 pm at Dadar beach, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) officials said that there were marginally fewer eco-friendly Ganesh immersions this year according to early reports.

“The immersion procession was delayed as there was a high tide of 4.54 metres at 2.41 pm. As a precautionary measure, mandals were asked to immerse idols after 4 pm only. We also deployed workers at beaches and artificial ponds to help people with the immersion,” said a BMC official.

A citizen who visited Dadar beach said that the fervour was less this time as compared to last year. Several spots in Mumbai were waterlogged in the morning, causing traffic woes and leading to inconvenience in ferrying the idols to the immersion spots.

“We were stuck in traffic for almost one-and-a-half hour at Sion and reached the Dadar beach not before 6 pm. Although the city sees rain mostly every year during visarjan, due to the continuous downpour since Monday night, the roads were waterlogged,” said Usha Shekokar, a resident of Kurla.

According to BMC data, till 9 pm Tuesday, around 38,570 idols were immersed, including 60 idols from public Ganesh mandals and 38,510 idols from households. The artificial ponds saw immersion of only 25 per cent of the total idols. Around 9,649 idols were immersed in artificial ponds, including 16 idols from public mandals.

“We urged the devotees who came to the Dahisar River for Ganpati visarjan to immerse idols in artificial ponds of SGNP. This will prevent harmful che-mical and paints from entering the natural riv-er,” said Vikram Chogle, member of River March.