Almost all the idols of Goddess Durga were immersed in river Daya, Kuakhai and Gangua canal in city peacefully amidst tight security.
The idols came to the immersion site in big processions which began at 4 pm on Sunday from three separate places in the city, including Saheednagar, Nayapalli and Chandrasekharpur.
The Commissionerate Police made special arrangements for traffic control in the capital city and at the immersion sites. CCTVs and other surveillance mechanisms were put in place at some spots to keep an eye on the processions.
In Cuttack the immersion was held with much fanfare. last year it was a lackluster immersion festival due to the twin furies of cyclone Phailin and subsequent floods.
All roads of Cuttack city led to the famous Devigada located on the left embankment of river Kathajodi on Sunday to witness the colourful immersion festival called Bhasani Utsav in local parlance that had begun late on Saturday night soon after the Bijaya Dashami and Ravan Podi.
Due to a pleasant weather condition and incident-free law and order situation in the city, lakhs went on pandal-hopping to witness pujas in over 150 puja mandaps of the city during the four-day puja rituals beginning from Wednesday.
After the culmination of puja on Saturday, the clay idols of the deities were taken in a colourful procession for immersion in the river waters. Till this report was made, at least 40 idols had been immersed and many more were in the queue.
“We hope the immersion festival would end by early hours on Monday morning,” said district Collector Nirmal Mishra, adding that the pujas and immersion festival have been incident-free this year.
The police and puja organisers heaved a shy of relief as the festivities in the city were coming to an end without any major untoward incident reported from anywhere.
“By the grace of Maa Durga, the Dussehra in Cuttack city this year has been a very smooth affair,” said Mahanagar Puja Committee secretary Bhikari Das. Meanwhile, the puja committees of the city donated an amount of Rs 1 lakh for the J&K flood relief and handed over a cheque to the district Collector for sending it to the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund.