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Durga Puja festivities come to end

By Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, Oct 23 - People in thousands bid adieu to Goddess Durga as the five-day Durga Puja celebrations came to an end on the Maha Dasami day today.

Idols of the Goddess, who ended her annual earthly sojourn, were ceremoniously immersed in water bodies � mostly rivers � across the State today, with the event attended by devotees and onlookers alike in their hordes. The city, which hosted over 500 pujas, saw the immersion process start around 10 am at three designated immersion sites at Pandu, Bharalumukh and Chunchali. Thousands of people, who gathered along the major roads of the city to witness the immersion procession, made quite a spectacle.

Sources in the district administration said that the immersion process was passing off smoothly and would continue till midnight.

Earlier, Dussehra was celebrated in the city last evening with traditional gaiety and fanfare. Devotees and onlookers hailed the victory of good over evil as the giant firecracker-stuffed effigies of Ravana, the demon king, and his cohorts were burnt.

Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, who inaugurated the Ram Leela Mahotsav organised by Asom Vijayadashami Mahotsav Samiti, Guwahati, at the Nehru Stadium here, said the occasion would help spread peace, amity and unity by transcending the barriers of caste, creed or religion.

�The Ram Leela Mahotsav would help to destroy the evil forces that are at work to tear asunder the social fabric. It would help arrest the rising incidents of violence and intolerance taking place in different parts of the country. We must rise in unison and bring about an end to the orgy of violence, intolerance and hatred orchestrated by certain nefarious forces and work for peace, unity and amity and for the welfare of humanity as a whole,� he said.

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