Ganesh Immersions Leave Visakhapatnam Beaches Strewn With Puja Waste

Visakhapatnam's Vinayaka Chavithi celebrations reached their peak over the weekend, with hundreds of devotees carrying idols to the coast for immersion. The processions, which ran through the night, included tableaux of mythological figures, folk dance troupes and drummers, and drew large crowds along the routes leading to RK Beach and other immersion sites. Families, many accompanied by children, gathered at the shore to bid farewell to their idols amid chants and applause.

Ahead of the festival, the Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation had designated immersion points across the city, among them Sagar Nagar, Jodugulapalem, Lumbini Park, Bheemili Beach, the Gosthani river near the Tagarapuvalasa flyover, Mangamaripeta Beach, Annavaram Beach, the IT SEZ beach cutting point, the stretch opposite the Naval Coastal Battery, Yarada Fishing Jetty and Appikonda Beach.

Officials had directed that barricades, lighting, lifeguards, boats, cranes, drinking water and medical teams be stationed at each point, with dedicated corridors kept clear for ambulances and fire engines. Devotees were also urged to avoid using fresh water for immersion, in view of the city's water stress, and to restrict the ritual to the designated beach points.

That advisory was only partly followed. By Sunday morning, several stretches of the coast — including Pedda Jalaripeta beach, not all of them official immersion sites — were covered with idol frames, flowers, plastic bags and other puja waste. Sanitation workers began large-scale clearance operations soon after sunrise. Discarded straw-and-bamboo frames and the remnants of larger community idols lay abandoned on the sand, alongside piles of flowers, banana leaves and plastic waste.

Environmentalists said the scale of the debris reflected a recurring problem. C.V. Naidu, Head of the Department of Meteorology and Oceanography at Andhra University, said the dumping of plastic and Plaster-of-Paris idols into the sea harmed marine life, with fish ingesting plastic that could eventually enter the human food chain as microplastics. He called for plastic carry bags, water bottles and PoP idols to be banned or their use restricted, adding that both the government and the public shared responsibility for protecting the environment and that only clay Ganesha idols should be used.

As sanitation staff worked through the morning to restore the beaches, the gap between the previous night's festivity and the waste it left behind was hard to miss.