Festive Season A Threat To Water Bodies In State Capital

BMC’s drive against use of PoP comes to a nought.

The Upper Lake and different water bodies of the city face a threat of getting polluted after this year’s Ganesh festival, as the civic body has failed to ban use of plaster of Paris for making Ganesh idols.

Notwithstanding raids and seizures, PoP idols are still being used by the idolmakers. They say that they completely agree with the government’s decision of banning PoP idols but are helpless.

Bringing to fore their reasons, they told Free Press that clay of requisite quality is not available in and around Bhopal and moreover, they lack space to store clay idols, which, unlike PoP ones, cannot be stacked one upon another.

The authorities had raided a locality near MANIT in the city recently and seized a large number of PoP idols. “We suffered losses of lakhs of rupees,” laments one of them.