Patna district magistrate Kumar Ravi expressed his displeasure and to an extent lost his cool for the second consecutive day when he found that preparatory work has not even started at many ghats for Chhath.

Ravi on Friday inspected 14 ghats for three hours starting from 6.30am, and found that work is lagging behind with less than three weeks left for Bihar’s biggest festival.

The ghats the DM inspected were Bans Ghat, Buddha Ghat, Collectorate Ghat, Mahendru Ghat, TN Banerjee Ghat, Mishri Ghat, Judges Ghat, Adalat Ghat, Bansi Ghat, Kaali Ghat, Kadam Ghat, Patna College Ghat, Krishna Ghat and Gandhi Ghat.

At Bans Ghat, he found that no work has started. He was upset and told Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC) commissioner Anupam Kumar Suman to start the work as soon as possible.

He also found the ghats dirty and no steps had been taken to clean it up, and was angry about it as well.

A similar situation unfolded at Collectorate Ghat

where work related to developing the parking space has not started yet.

At Krishna Ghat and

Patna College Ghat, Ravi saw that the pace of work was very slow and garbage was scattered all over.

“It is the duty of the PMC commissioner to ensure that cleaning the ghats should start immediately because the festival of Chhath is all about cleanliness and devotees first see how clean the ghats is,” Tavi said.

“I am surprised that rubbish is scattered all over the ghats and in some ghats even work has not started. It is not a good sign and the officials should pull up their socks to provide the best arrangement to the devotees this Chhath festival,” he added.

Senior superintendent of police Manu Maharaaj, superintendent of police (Central) D. Amarkesh and officials of public health and engineering department and the building construction department were also present.

Ravi asked the building construction officials to set up changing rooms, control rooms and watchtowers at all the ghats. He stressed that the changing rooms should be covered with dark colour clothes and height should be more than 6 feet.

He also asked Patna Electric Supply Undertaking (Pesu) general manager Dilip Kumar Singh to ensure the uninterrupted power supply at all ghats. He said Dilip should ensure that no naked wire is found at any ghat. The public health officials were instructed to ensure adequate number of water tankers and water ATMs at all ghats apart from separate washrooms for men and women devotees.