Kolkata Mayor and state minister, Firhad Hakim said he is \u201cextremely sorry\u201d for the turn of events at Rabindra Sarobar on the occasion of Chhat Puja. He uploaded a video to apologise to the people of the city for not being able to prevent the pollution caused to the lake in south Kolkata.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of devotees broke open the locked gates of the Sarobar \u2013 which were to be kept closed to protect the water, its flora and fauna from pollution \u2013 and entered inside the premises and performed rituals on Saturday and Sunday.<\/p>\n
In a video titled \u201cMayor Speaks\u201d, Firhad Hakim said, \u201cI am sorry that despite taking many initiatives, we could not stop people from going into Rabindra Sarobar.\u00a0We had facilitated 14 ponds for the Chhat Puja. We made vigorous campaigns, posters and whatever else was possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said that despite these efforts taken by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (that he heads) and the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (which too, he is in charge of), those who traditionally come for puja in Rabindra Sarobar, still went in.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe cannot stop them by force. We tried our level best,\u201d he said, adding that the KMDA and KMC workers had quickly sprung into action and cleaned the water, flowers and whatever else had been dumped in it within an hour.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople performed their puja because we cannot stop any faith from performing their religious rites in West Bengal. There was an order from the National Green Tribunal. All the environmentalists are unhappy. But I appeal to them to join us and make people understand,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Mayor added that a court order cannot prevent nor motivate people and they should be made aware of pollution, air quality and so on. He invited people, primarily environmentalists and green activists to join him in the campaign for cleaner environment.<\/p>\n
Even as the NGT had banned all rituals in the Sarobar, on Saturday morning around 200 Chhat devotees broke the locks of two gates in Sarobar and barged in, tearing down notices. There were hardly policemen to stop them, and a day later, dead fish and a dead turtle were spotted floating on the water by some people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
He appealed to green activists to join him in spreading awareness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":279,"featured_media":7142,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_seo_keywords":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-bengal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/279"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}