Pune police commissioner Rashmi Shukla visited major Ganesh mandals in the city to take a stock of the law and order situation, on Friday. Pavan Khengre
The plan of the ruling BJP in the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) to have a grand celebration of 125 years of the Ganesh festival is fast snowballing into a controversy. The Opposition in the civic body has alleged that the celebrations had been planned only as the BJP wanted to use it for the publicity of the party. “The programmes for the celebration of Ganesh festival is solely being decided by the ruling BJP. Their only aim is to get publicity to the party through the programme,” said Opposition leader and NCP corporator Chetan Tupe.
The ruling BJP has not taken the opposition into confidence before finalising the programmes for the celebration of 125 years of Ganesh festival. “A two-wheeler rally has been organised on August 20 as part of the celebration which is supposed to create environment awareness. One fails to understand how thousands of two-wheelers creating air pollution would be able to create environment awareness among citizens,” he said, adding that they should have planned a bicycle rally to send the message of environment awareness.
Congress leader Arvind Shinde said that the BJP was using the civic funds for the publicity of the BJP through the Ganesh festival. “The ruling BJP has been creating controversy after another on the celebration of the 125 years of Ganesh festival instead of their claim of branding the festival,” he added.
The controversy started with the PMC’s decision to refrain from including the photograph of Balgangadhar Tilak in the publicity material of the celebrations. Mayor Mukta Tilak had said that no photographs would be published in the publicity material of the grand celebrations. The PMC later included the photograph of Tilak after facing criticism from the citizens for not including the photo of the national leader who made the Ganesh festival a public event.
BJP leader and standing committee chairperson Murlidhar Mohol said that the celebration of 125 years of Ganesh festival was being planned in a big way to brand the festival and attract tourists. “The festival is not being used for the publicity of a political party as the Ganesh festival is a public event. It is a proud moment for each of the citizens to celebrate the festival which was started 125 years ago,” he added.
The civic body had given the work of media publicity to a private agency instead of the publicity department of the PMC. The services of the private media agency were discontinued after there was a blunder in the press release. “The process of appointing the private agency for publicity was going on, but the agency had already started its services. It has been conveyed to them that their services are not required,” said the civic officer.
The PMC has also planned two events with the aim of making them register them in the Guinness Book of World Records. There would be a mega event for preparing Ganesh idol of sand in which thousand of students would be given the required material to make the idols at the same time. The second event was of playing of dhol-tasha, traditional band for procession, by thousands of participants.
