Hyderabad:About 40 hours after the main immersion processions began, the last of the nearly 3.3 lakh large idols of Ganesha idols were immersed in lakes across the city in the CURE region. The exercise was largely completed at about 2 pm on Saturday.
At a conserve estimate of about 50 persons accompanying each idol on average, the number of people who went to the lakes in the processions would number about 16 lakh. This figure was apart from the lakhs who gathered along the roads, stretching into multiple route-kilometres to watch the procession, clearly making this one of the largest of people.
The ceremonies concluded almost without incident, even if it left behind about 6,000 metric tonnes of trash for sanitation workers to pick up.
Traffic restrictions at the Telugu Talli statue, the hub of the proceedings, were lifted at about that time, allowing general traffic to pass through the arterial roads.
The police reimposed traffic restrictions in the morning as a long queue of vehicles carrying Ganesh idols were still waiting from Abids to Tank Bund and NTR Marg.
Earlier, office-goers who expected the roads to be free found barricades placed on the roads leading to Tank Bund from Basheerbagh, Himayatnagar, and RP Road. This affected traffic on key routes, including Himayatnagar Y Junction–Liberty, Basheerbagh Old Ambedkar Statue–Basheerbagh flyover, Old PS–Iqbal Minar/Secretariat, Dwaraka–Iqbal Minar, Ravindra Bharathi–Iqbal Minar, Secretariat–Necklace Rotary/People’s Plaza and Old Ambedkar Statue–Upper Tank Bund, leaving commuters to take alternate routes or face delays in reaching the surrounding areas.
Police had announced traffic restrictions and diversions in advance in view of the immersion arrangements. However, commuters who reached the Tank Bund stretch said they were caught off guard by the continued restrictions and movement of vehicles carrying idols.
Some commuters said they had expected normal traffic movement after the main immersion procession on Friday and were unaware that immersion activity would continue into Saturday afternoon. “I knew there were restrictions, but I did not expect the immersion activity to continue till the afternoon. We had to take a longer route and were delayed,” said a commuter.
Another commuter said the diversions added to the travel time, particularly for those heading towards central parts of the city. “We were stopped at one point and asked to take a diversion. It took considerably longer to reach our destination,” the commuter said.
Police personnel continued to regulate traffic at important junctions around Tank Bund as the immersion activity continued through the evening. The restrictions were gradually eased as the movement of idols reduced towards the evening.
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