Hyderabad: Cynosure of all eyes, Bada Ganesh

Hyderabad: The 70-foot-tall Khairatabad Ganesh found its ceremonial farewell peacefully in the waters of the Hussain Sagar on Tuesday amid Jai Ganesha chants from the swelling crowd.

According to the planned schedule, the immersion was done from crane number four installed at NTR Marg, within a record time of ten minutes. This is perhaps the second consecutive year that immersion was completed in a short time in recent years. The Badda Ganesh was immersed in the lake by 1:40 pm.

The jumbo eco-friendly Ganapathi idol started the grand procession (Shobha Yatra) in the morning, where more than one lakh devotees participated in the procession, filling the lane from Khairatabad to NTR Marg and dancing to the tune of the drums and chanting ‘Ganpati Bappa Morya, agle baras tu jaldi aa’. Once again, this early hour's immersion has left the city tension-free of the huge traffic jams that used to occur due to the delay of immersion. "We have come from Nizamabad to be part of this Shobha Yatra of Khairatabad. I love to see the procession; every year the idol has been taken for immersion in a very colourful way," said Sravanti Rao, a devotee.

“Even this year Bada Ganesh immersion happened earlier, this has disheartened me but I later realised that with this the city has got a huge relief from the massive traffic which we used to face earlier. Due to the delay in Bada Ganesh immersion, immersions of other idols are also affected, and now till the next day we had faced hardship; even to commute from Bible House to Telephone Bhavan used to take almost one hour,” said Sai Teja, an IT employee.

According to the officials of the Ustav Committee, everything has taken place as per the schedule, and this year's immersion concluded in a short span of six and a half hours. A special pooja for the Khairatabad Ganesh began at midnight at the pandal. The loading of the idol began at around 2 am on a special trailer used to lug the idol. By 4 am, welding works were completed. The grand procession from the puja pandal after the rituals were completed went smoothly, but immersing the idol took a little time, as dismantling the iron welding of the giant Ganesh took almost an hour. This year around 53 lakh devotees visited the puja pandal on all ten days.

This year, for the first time, the funds collected through donations were not disclosed to the public. Donation boxes were opened on Monday under CCTV surveillance, and officials found that devotees had donated nearly Rs 70 lakh in total. A member of the Khairatabad Ganesh Utsav Samiti said it had collected about Rs 40 lakh through advertisements. Donations made through the UPI payment portal were yet to be added up, he added.