Plastic bags, styrofoam plates and even banners lay scattered on Sunday in Salt Lake parks and playgrounds where Durga Puja and fairs were held.
This year, with many Covid curbs relaxed, many pujas in Salt Lake had allowed stalls to come up near the pandals and also held community lunch in the parks.
However, till Sunday, neither the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation (BMC) nor the organising committees cleaned up the premises and nearly all parks looked messy with plastic bags, plates, glasses and banners, and pieces of plywood strewn all around.
While some organisers said they had requested the BMC to clean up the grounds, civic officials claimed the onus lay with the organisers as they had taken a rent from the stalls.
Mayor Krishna Chakraborty said: “We have limited resources and are doing the best we can.”
On Sunday, The Telegraph drove around the township and found parks in all three sectors in a sorry state.
The park in FD Block, where a Durga puja was held, hosted a fair complete with rides and food stalls. On Sunday, plastic bags were flying about whenever there was a light breeze. Outside the park, where a number of stalls had come up, glasses and cloth pieces were lying around. The roads leading to the FD Block park were littered with garbage.
Banibrata Banerjee, mayoral council member of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation in charge of health and a key organiser of the puja, said they would start clearing up the park once the pandal was entirely dismantled.
“Ours is a big pandal and we had kept a part of the structure for Lakshmi Puja. We will start a clean-up drive once the structure is brought down,” Banerjee said.
In AK Block, too, the roads leading to the park were lined with plastic waste and styrofoam items. DebjaniChakraborty, a physician who lives in the block, said that given the rise in dengue cases, the streets must be cleaned up fast. “These bags and plates will turn into mosquito-breeding sites if it rains,” Chakraborty said pointing at a pile of plates near her house.
A member of the AK Block Durga Puja organising committee said they had requested the BMC to clean the roads and the park.