Nagpur: Ahead of the 10-day Ganeshotsav commencing from September 13, the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) on Saturday conducted a random drive to check whether sellers are putting red mark on the rear side of Plaster of Paris (PoP) idols. The civic body found 12 sellers violating the norms and recovered Rs19,000 fine from them.
NMC’s health officer (sanitation) Dr Pradip Dasarwar said the civic body has formed 10 squads comprising retired army officials from Nuisance Detection Squad and officials from sanitation department.
The drive started at 10am and continued till 3pm. The squad visited areas where Ganesh idols are traditionally manufactured and sold. The idols were inspected for use of ecologically hazardous material like PoP, chemical and lead-based paints that are polluting city’s water bodies.
To curb sell of PoP idols, the NMC has issued guidelines to the sellers, which include marking the idols with red colour on its rear for identification, displaying posters about immersion of PoP idols only at the artificial tanks provided by the NMC and obtaining licence from the civic body.
“In all, we visited 101 shops selling Ganesh idols to check whether the guidelines are being followed,” he said and added seven sellers were fined in Laxmi Nagar zone for violating norms, three in Dharampeth zone and two in Satranjipura. The NMC will continue to penalize violators in the coming days too.
To a query, Dr Dasarwar clarified that though there is no restriction on use of PoP idols, the NMC will continue the ban on immersion of such idols in city’s lakes.
Even though the NMC had prepared a policy on PoP idol ban, the proposal is yet to get state government nod. In 2017, the government had issued a notification making red marks mandatory on PoP idols.
