SILCHAR, Sept 16 - With only a month left for the Durga Puja festival, the Silchar Municipal Board held a meeting with the senior citizens and officials of various departments in order to discuss ways to ensure a hassle-free autumn festival for the people.
The meeting, chaired by NN Tagore, chairman of the civic board, focussed on key issues faced during the mega festival, including immersion of idols at the solitary immersion ghat at Sadarghat, ensuring safety during the procession and immersion, improving road conditions and drainage clearance, sufficient availability of power supply and traffic management.
Speakers in the meeting were particularly concerned about the need for an alternate immersion ghat other than Sadarghat, availability of trolleys for carrying the idols to the river and arrangement of sufficient number of boats to save lives.
The road adjacent to Banga Bhawan, it may be mentioned, is used as exit route by the trucks and vehicles from the immersion venue. Unlike yesteryears, the breadth of the road has narrowed owing to the ongoing construction of the second bridge over river Barak, Tagore said.
�The road via Banga Bhawan was the conventional and only way for trucks to move out of the immersion area. But as the road has narrowed to a certain degree due to the bridge, we are looking forward towards the PWD to ensure that trucks can easily move through the available space,� Tagore maintained. He added that the Board shall look into the demand for a second immersion ghat and work out plans for next year.
In reply, Nihar Ranjan Paul, Executive Engineer of PWD (Rural Roads Division) at Silchar assured the gathering that the narrow passage will be apt for movement of trucks on Vijaya Dashami.
Amit Kumar Singh, Inspector from the NDRF said, �We shall deploy our men at the ghat. But the civic authority must ensure that the movement of private boats is restricted around the immersion area. Only NDRF and SDRF boats should be allowed. We shall be ready with lights to illuminate around 10,000 sq meter area to avert any untoward incident.�
Speaking on the traffic management, Assistant Traffic Inspector Santanu Das said that movement of all commercial vehicles shall be restricted from 9 am on puja days. We shall try our level best to keep the roads congestion-free, he added.
