The Calcutta Municipal Corporation is planning to set up a large idol melting facility next year near Baje Kadamtala ghat to reduce the pollution from immersion in open water, Firhad Hakim, the chief of the CMC’s board of administrators, told Metro on Friday evening.
While Baje Kadamtala ghat — popularly known as Babughat — gets all the attention, Metro found on Friday that most of the other ghats lack infrastructure to combat pollution generated from immersion.
Babughat, on Friday, had 510 immersions out of a total 1,900 sets of idols immersed in 16 ghats of the city, a senior official of the civic body said.
“The pilot, using Ganga water to wash and melt the idol structures in, has been reasonably successful in Doi Ghat. We are planning to set up a mega-melting chamber close to Baje Kadamtala ghat where a number of idol sets can be immersed together using Ganga water; and then the runoff will be put to sewers,” said Hakim in the presence of Debasish Kumar and Debabrata Majumdar, senior members of the board of administrators.
A Durga idol being immersed at Babughat on Saturday afternoon. Bishwarup Dutta
Hakim added that there would be no imposition and clubs can choose any of the immersion modes.
“If a mega melting structure is set up then many puja committees, after the carnival, will use the environment-friendly mode” said Kumar, whose club Tridhara introduced the wash and melt model in the city last year.
“We also expect many pujas to join; people have accepted the mode,” agreed Partha Ghosh, founder member of the Forum for Durgotsab, a platform for community pujas in city.
“It’s good to see the CMC pushing the wash and melt model that I have been rooting for long; but they should take expert opinion before embarking on mega scale,” observed environmentalist Subhas Datta.
Incidentally Gwalior ghat, less than a half kilometre away from Babughat, stands in absolute contrast with highly inadequate immersion infrastructure despite receiving maximum idols. On Friday, Gwalior ghat had 555 immersions, the highest in the city.
While the focus mainly remains on large ghats — Baje Kadamtala, Gwalior and Nimtolla ghat that had 225 immersions on Friday — about one-third of the total idols get immersed in smaller ghats which hardly have any arrangement in minimising pollution from immersion.