The famous lakshmi Puja festival has started with much religious fervour here, but have the organisers taken enough safety measures at the pandals to avoid any mishapIJ
The fact is that the organisers have violated norms rendering the pandals vulnerable to threat. The puja organising committees are found paying scant attention to safety measures, including fire.
According to the officer-in-charge of Kendrapada Fire Station Sarat Kumar Mallick, as per the standing rule, the puja organisers are required to get a no-objection certificate from the district fire office for erecting light arches near their puja pandals. But not a single pandal has done it even as a deadline of taking permission ended on Friday last.
Notably, ahead of the lakshmi Puja, a preparatory meeting was held a fortnight back, where the district administration had asked all the puja organizers to take permission from fire station, CESU, police and Sub-Divisional Magistrate for organizing the puja and using mike. But the decision of the district administration only remains in pen and paper.
In a precautionary measure, a fire team visited all the puja pandals to check the electricity connections on Friday but found not a single puja pendal keeping fire extinguisher, sand packet and water buckets to tackle fire in case it occurs.
“We are going to conduct a raid in all the puja pandals and will ask the defaulters to follow safety norms,” stated Mallick.
The fire station has opened two temporary fire stations in the township area by deploying 14 extinguishers in the fire prone zones, Mallick added.
Similarly, unauthorised electricity connections are a rule than an exception in many pandals. Dangerously hung up wires connected to high voltage overhead lines are too glaring to escape notice. Of the 64 puja pandals that have come up this year, only 12 are armed with mandatory permission from Energy department, where as other puja pandal organizers are yet to take proper permission for electricity connection, stated ENZEN assistant manager Chandra Sanatan Moharana.
The power consumption of these puja pandals is quite heavy, given the fact that illuminated light decoration adorns majority of pandals. The local CESU division is going to bear with transmission loss of over nearly 500 watts every day.
Till date, less than 20 per cent of puja pandals had got the mandatory department permission to draw power. The rest are simply stealing power, revealed Moharana.
“The dead line for obtaining electricity connection for puja pandals ended on Friday. As a result, we have started visiting all the puja pandals to check the authorization certificate issued by the CESU department for power supply. If anyone failed to produce, then the electricity department would impose fine and would ask them to take permission for authorized electrification in their pandals,” he cautioned.