CM Fadnavis gives three days relief to city's Ganesh mandals
Deadline for applications to erect pandals is now Sept 5.
Mumbai: In a major relief for the city’s Ganesh Mandals, the deadline for filing applications to erect pandals for Ganeshotsav has been extended to September 5. The decision was taken by chief minister Devendra Fadnavis in a meeting with officials of Ganesh Mandals on Thursday.
The meeting was held at the Sahyadri guesthouse and top state government officials, officials from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), the police and the MMRDA were present when the CM announced an extension of three days.
The BMC had asked all Ganesh mandals to file applications by September 2.
Naresh Dahibavkar, president of the Brihanmumbai Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav Samanvay Samiti (BSGSS) – an umbrella organisation of the city’s Ganesh mandals – said, “The inspection for illegal pandals will be held seven days before Ganeshotsav begins. Since the festival begins on September 13 this year, there is still ample time to allow the mandals to file applications.
“Hence, we requested the CM to extend the deadline up to September 5, which will still allow enough time to process applications and also for inspection of illegal pandals.”
According to civic data, nearly 80 per cent of the mandals have been given permission to erect pandals for the Ganeshotsav. Out of the 2,843 applications received so far, the BMC has processed 2,205 applications. Of them, it has granted permissions to 1,766 mandals, whereas 638 applications have been rejected.
In an attempt to improve the application approval rate, this year the civic body had introduced an online system in all 24 wards of the city. The BMC had made it compulsory for all mandals to get approvals from the police, the traffic and the fire department.
However, the online system was mired in controversy with reports of many Ganesh mandals facing several difficulties in filling the application form online.
They faced problems like requisite forms not getting uploaded, the online system crashing midway etc, were proving to be major hurdles for several Ganesh mandals.