Nagpur: There was a time when all our lakes used to get polluted due to huge immersion of idols during Ganpati festival. However, due to the untiring continuous efforts of Nagpur Municipal Corporation supported by few NGOs, now, the scenario has changed completely. This year, NMC has barricaded all lakes of Nagpur city and are erecting 419 artificial tanks across the city for immersion of idols of height less than 4 feet.

Surbhi Jaiswal, Team Lead, Green Vigil Foundation, the NGO campaigning at Futala Lake on all 10 days of visarjan since 2010 stated, there has been a complete paradigm shift of thought process of citizens. A decade ago, it was extremely difficult to convince devotees for not immersing idols in lake, they were not even ready to hand over nirmalyas to us, but, now people have realized the importance and need of lake conservation, hence, not a single idol is being immersed in lakes since last year.

Mehul Kosurkar, Deputy Team Lead, Green Vigil expressed concern about the presence of POP idols in the market inspite of the ban. He estimated, out of 900 idols immersed in artificial tanks placed at Airforce side of Futala Lake in the first five days of visarjan, 29 idols were POP.

Green Vigil Foundation has been an integral part of the Eco-friendly Ganpati Visarjan campaign and has been assisting NMC since 2010. This is the 14th Year, when around 40 members of Green Vigil are campaigning at the airforce side of Futala Lake for immersion of idols in artificial tanks and collection of nirmalyas. Team members of Green Vigil Kaustav Chatterjee, Surbhi Jaiswal, Mehul Kosurkar,

Bishnudeo Yadav, Shriya Jogey, Priya Yadav, Sheetal Choudhary, Tushar Deshmukh, Parth Jumde, Pinaki Banik along with other team members are working hard for the campaign. Students of Environmental Science Department of Kamla Nehru College, under the guidance of Mrs. Neha Thakur, Head of the Department, have joined Green Vigil for the campaign.