Kolkata, Oct 30 (PTI) Thousands of devotees offered puja to the Sun God at ghats along the Hooghly river and in temporary ghats along waterbodies in Kolkata on Sunday on the occasion of the Chhath festival.
A Kolkata Municipal Corporation official said devotees offered puja on river banks at seven ghats along the Hooghly before sunset.
Across the city, devotees offered puja in 50 waterbodies where temporary ghats were built by the KMC.
Unlike in 2019, when a section of Chhath devotees barged into Rabindra Sarobar and Subhas Sarobar lakes in south and north Kolkata respectively, violating a National Green Tribunal order about not using the waters of the lake for the rituals, this year not a single devotee was seen on Sunday.
Over 300 policemen were deployed to man the gates of two lakes which were closed from 6 am Sunday and will remain so till 4 pm on Monday, an official of Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA), the custodian of two waterbodies, said.
“It is reassuring that people have become conscious about environmental issues,” a West Bengal Pollution Control Board official said.
Several groups of devotees arrived at the ghats to the accompaniment of loud music.
The sound of firecrackers was heard since the afternoon in areas such as Tollygunje, Naktala, Patuli, Bhawanipore, Chetla, Beleghata, Cossipore and Narkeldanga areas of the city, environmentalists claimed.
Environmentalist Somendra Mohan Ghosh said Sunday was “the first phase of Chhath when PCB fireworks’ bursting schedule was violated by some revellers but we are not sure if the police or the PCB took any note.” A WBPCB official said the air quality across the city remained at a ‘satisfactory’ level and no major case of sound violation has been received in the control room.
In Asansol, Trinamool Congress MP Shatrughan Sinha participated in the celebrations. PTI SUS NN NN
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Source: The Print
