With 58 feet tall Maha Ganapati of Khairatabad Mandap as the main attraction, the 10-day long Vinayaka Chaturthi festival began in Hyderabad amid great fanfare and under tight security involving 20,000 policemen and 12,000 CCTV cameras.
More than 40,000 idols of various sizes, shapes and forms were installed in Hyderabad, Secunderabad and Cyberabad and thousands of people thronged the mandaps this evening.
Governor ESl Narasimhan along with his wife were the first to offer prayers at the Khairatabad mandap amid the chanting of hymns by the priests. They were accompanied by the Minister T Srinivas Yadav who described the tallest idol as a “model for entire country”.
later the Mandap was thrown open for the general public to offer prayers. Similar mandaps, colourfully decorated and illuminated have come up on every nood and corner and in the streets in the entire city.
The ten day festival will concluded with a massive procession on September 16 attended by hundreds of thousands of devotees along the route from Balapur in the old city to the Hussain Sagar lake.
Security was specially tight this year as Ganesh festival was coinciding with Eidul Azha when hundreds of thousands of animals are sacrificed by Muslims in Hyderabad. The Eid will fall on September 13.
In view of the history of communal disturbances during the festival and the procession, the Hyderabad city police has imposed several restrictions including banning of the DJ music bands. The police has also made it compulsory for the organisers of every mandap to seem permission from them and also to take electricity connection from the authorities concerned.
But the Bhagyanagar Ganesh Utsav Samiti General Secretary Bhagwant Rao told the people that no permission was necessary as it was their constitutional right to worship.
This year the festival of Elephant faced Hindu deity was marked by the controversy over the maximum height of the idols. In view of the restrictions caused by the construction of the elevated Metro Rail Project, the administration has asked all the mandaps to ensure that the maximum height of any idol was not more than 15 feet.
larson and Toubro company, which is building the Metro project had informed the Government that as the Metro stations were under construction at many places, special on the route of the main Ganesh procession, carrying very tall idols will not be possible this year.
During a survey conducted along with the traffic police officials the engineers said that the maximum height at the Moazzam Jahi Market was only 13 feet. Hence very tall idols can not pass through this point to go to Hussain Sagar lake for immersion on the last day of the festival.
There were many other points like Ajanta Gate and lakdi Ka Pul and Putli Bowli to Market where similar barricades were put up.
The State Government had briefed the organisers of the festival specially the BJP controlled Bhagyanagar Ganesh Utsav Samiti about the situation. However the Samiti General Secretary Bhagwant Rao rejected the restriction. “The Government has no role in deciding the height of the idols. It is fundamental right of the people to worship irrespective of the height of the idol”, he said.
There was also controversy over the immersion of the idols made of plaster of Paris, iron rods and chemical paints in the city lakes adding to the pollution of water.
However the Utsav Samiti rejected the criticism by the environmental groups and urged the Government to first control the industrial pollution. “We have been organising this festival for the last 37 years and there were no restrictions till now”, he said.
However the State Government was now making special arrangements to save the lake from pollution by ensuring that the idols were immersed in specially created tanks on the banks of the lakes.