Residents donating idols at a pandal set up by PCMC on Tuesday.
For the first time in its history, the industrial city of Pimpri-Chinchwad shunned Ganesh immersion, opting for en mass idol donations. The “dhol lezims” and throwing of gulal which have been an integral part of the Ganesh festival were also missing this year.
After the state government banned Ganesh installation processions and immersion procession owing to the Covid pandemic, the PCMC issued further orders, banning the immersion of Ganesh idols in the rivers passing through the industrial city.
The civic administration had set up pandals for collecting Ganesh idols from mandals and families which installed the idols. PCMC Additional Municipal Commissioner Santosh Patil said: “We have received a good response from Ganesh mandals and citizens for idol donations. Till 8 pm, we have received hundreds of Ganesh idols from citizens,” he said.
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All these Ganesh idols, he said, will be collected and immersed as per the ritual in quarries located in different parts of the city.
Patil said the Ganesh mandals and citizens responded to their appeal to donate the idols instead of going to the river ghats and crowding the area. “During immersion every year, hundreds of people gather at river ghats which leads to overcrowding and could have lead to spread of the coronavirus. Therefore, we had banned entry to the river ghat area. And instead set up pandals for idol donations near the river ghats,” he said.
Patil said there were no loudspeakers, no dhol lezims and no noise. “A handful of people on their own carried the Ganesh idols and handed them over to our personnel after performing the aarti,” he said, adding that Ganesh “donation” was peaceful across the city on Tuesday.
While some mandals and residents donated their Ganesh idols, some immersed the idols in artificial water tanks or in ponds near in their areas. Hrishikesh Marale, a youth, said,”Every year, we used to take our home Ganesh idol for immersion in the Pavana river. This year, however we immersed the idol in a tank on our terrace,” he said.
Jumbo Hospital gets cracking
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Meanwhile, the 816-bed jumbo hospital set up at Nehrunagar in Pimpri-Chinchwad started functioning from Tuesday. On its first day, 12 COVID patients were admitted at the jumbo hospital.
PCMC Additional Municipal Commissioner Santosh Patil said initially they were admitting patients who had come other hospitals like YCMH or Bhosari hospital. “Later, we will start admitting walk in patients,” he said.
Pimpri-Chinchwad today had around 600 positive cases, a major drop from around 1200 cases that are surfacing every day. But Municipal Commissioner Shravan Hardikar said,”These could be because we did not get report of test conducted by private hospitals. Tomorrow, we will get all the test reports together and will see much more cases,” he said.
The total number of positive cases so far has reached 49,300 in Pimpri-Chinchwad.
Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.
Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives.
Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees.
During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa.
Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.
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