With five days to go for celebrations, only 155 pandals get permit to install idol
The annual 11-day Ganeshtosav celebration is set to begin from August 25 onwards for which five days are left. Yet, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has a long list of permissions to be granted to Ganesh mandals for raising pandals in the city.
As per the report provided by BMC, the municipal corporation received 1,511 applications from various Ganesh mandals seeking permission to raise pandals up to August 19. But from 1,511 applications received, BMC only managed to give permission to 155 mandals while remaining 1,212 application are still awaiting a nod.
The report further states that from 1,511 applications received, 88 applications have been rejected on various grounds like in Matunga east (F North ward) where four applications were rejected as mandal owners failed to pay the penalty imposed earlier to them and so permission was rejected. Wherein the most number of applications rejected are from Dadar west (G north ward), Bandra east (H east ward), Malad east and west (P South and north Ward).
The report also further gives the reason regarding why the applications are still pending before civic corporation.
The remark given states that in most of the wards No Objection Certificates (NOCs) from traffic and police department are yet to be allotted while on some applications work is in progress.
Worli, Lower Parel and Mahalaxmi areas (G South and north ward) has 94 and 79 application pending due to NOCs, similarly Govandi west (M west ward) has 86 applications pending, while Bandra east (H east ward) 75 applications and Mulund (S ward) 48 applications are in scrutiny stage.
Interestingly there are 11,000 sarvajanik Ganesh mandals in Mumbai city but municipal corporation received only 1511 applications seeking permission for raising pandals, less in numbers as per the per centage of ganesh mandals in the city.
The civic corporation also received applications from murtikars (sculptors) for erecting pandals. Out of 517 applications received 161 were granted permission and 166 have been rejected untill August 19. While 191 applications are still pending due to NOCs.