As the four-day Chhath puja festival begins on Sunday, the Yamuna ghats are decked up. The Delhi Government and municipal corporations are working in tandem to ready the river banks, including making safety arrangements for people who will throng the ghats on the last two days of the festival.
Ahead of Chhath Puja, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia inspected Hathi ghat on the banks of Yamuna with the city Government declaring a public holiday on November 17.
Officials took the duo around the ghat that is located near ITO. Makeshift pandals, sandbanks, floodlights and barricades have been put up across its premises.
“We are making all arrangements and preparations are almost complete at the ghats under our jurisdiction. Besides, beautifying and making sanitation arrangements at the ghats, we have also put up mobile dispensaries there,” director, Press & Information, North Delhi Municipal Corporation, Yogendra Singh Mann, said. North Delhi has ghats like Wazirabad Ghat, Ram Ghat and Kudesia Ghat, besides Western Yamuna Canal that crosses at Pitampura.
The festival which is mainly observed by the people from Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh - a sizeable population of people hailing from the two States - is an age-old tradition of paying obeisance to the Sun God by congregating at nearby river banks and water bodies.
“We have done levelling at the ghats, removed weeds and vegetation growth that sprung up during monsoon season. Besides, we have carried out fumigation there and stationed mobile toilets,” Mann said.
Also, arrangements are being made in ghats in east and south Delhi and both East Delhi (EDMC) and South Delhi municipal corporations (SDMC) said work was almost complete and mayors and senior officials are now inspecting the ghats.
“We have one major ghat — Kalindi Kunj Ghat — under our jurisdiction, which attracts a huge crowd every year on this festive occasion. We have made sanitation and beautification arrangements there already,” a senior SDMC official said.
Two teenagers drown
New Delhi: Two teenagers on Sunday drowned in a canal at east Delhi's Kondli area where they had gone with their relatives to celebrate Chhath festival, police said. They have been identified as 16-year-old Pushkar and 17-year-old Amit. Their bodies were recovered by the fire department, an official said. The incident took place around 2 PM when the duo were present at the banks of the canal celebrating Chhath festival with their friends and relatives, the official added.