Thousands of devotees offered Chhath puja — prayers to please the Sun God — in knee-deep waters of the Ganga this evening. But RJD chief Laloo Prasad Yadav’s well-publicised attempt to please devotees and bring the Ganga closer to the city by dredging a channel at a cost of Rs 80 lakh has boomeranged. Laloo’s ambition of leading the river that had drifted four to seven km northwards over the last decade to its earlier course has not succeeded. Due to inadequate flow, the channel has just filth and sludge, and blocks the devotees’ walk to the Ganga. Announcing the project before the monsoons, Laloo said he had dreamed that Ganga mata had expressed her desire to flow closer to Patna. After the money literally went down the drain, devotees have found offering the puja tougher than before. They had to cross an extra hurdle to reach it — the district administration’s bridges over the ‘‘Laloo channel’’. But for Bihar’s first family, these did not pose problems. Chief Minister Rabri Devi, Laloo, sons, daughters and Rabri’s brothers Subhash and Sadhu Yadav offered puja at a newly constructed pool within the CM’s compound.
