LUCKNOW: Whatever
little order
and cleanliness was found in
Bada Mangal
bhandaras on May 16 was missing on the second Tuesday of the holy month. People dumped paper plates and food waste on roads and around stalls. Many organisers did not care to place dustbins near stalls to prevented littering.
Wireless Crossing, one of the busiest in Mahanagar, was littered with food waste.
Priya Kumari, a commuter, said, “Garbage was thrown all over the place, making it difficult to cross the road. No bhandara organiser seemed to care about it. It took me 20 minutes to cross that patch.”
Another busy crossing, Sikanderbagh on
Rana Pratap Marg
had a large dump of disposable bowls, polythene bags and leftover food waste near the Shiva temple. The organiser was conveniently dumping waste behind the stall on the road. There was no dustbin in the vicinity and all those who took prasad would dump the waste on the road.
“LMC’s sanitary workers will anyway clean the roads the next morning, so people are conveniently dumping waste around,” said the organiser.
In Aliganj, too, most organisers had no system for waste disposal. They were dumping plates in open drains.
In the evening, TOI’s drive to check the cleanliness status of stalls in Sadar Bazar, Hazratganj and Rahimnagar found that organisers had left the place but nobody had removed garbage heaps.
Besides littering, haphazardly parked vehicles were also witnessed across most bhandaras.
Mohan Srivastava, who had put up a stall near Dainik Jagran crossing, said, “It is the responsibility of LMC to create awareness among people to refrain from littering during a religious programme. They should have at least provided dustbins or ordered sweeping of roads twice on Bada Mangal.”
Meanwhile, LMC maintained that there were many organisers who did not even seek permission from it before putting up stalls. “It is the organiser’s responsibility to see that people who come to a stall throw waste at designated places,” said an official.
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