Even as the district officials were looking forward to a break for at least a day after four extremely busy days of a long weekend, Tuesday brought them the news that the First Citizen of the State, E.S.L. Narasimhan, would be visiting Mattapally Ghat for his Krishna Pushkar bath on August 20, sending them into a tizzy, especially the police administration.
Ministers A. Indrakaran Reddy (Endowments) and G. Jagadheesh Reddy (Energy) undertook an aerial survey with multiple objectives. While on one hand, they wanted it to assume the role of a security exercise, on the other it was to check the flow of the waters along the course of the Krishna in the district, touching the 28 bathing ghats. As for the number of pilgrims who took a dip on Tuesday, it was far, far lesser than in the first four days and this made it look like a much-more-relaxed affair. The presence of natives at what are described as ‘local’ ghats apart, most of the crowds appeared to prefer the three ghats at Nagarjunasagar, apart from the ones at Wadapally and Mattapally. Earlier in the day, just before the Raj Bhavan communique, Collector and District Magistrate P. Satyanarayana Reddy, Joint Collector M. Satyanarayana, Superintendent of Police Jayaprakash were said to have inspected the Wadapally ghat as a fall-back option for the Governor’s visit.
Mr. Narasimhan will fly by chopper, to a helipad close to Mattapally on the morning of August 20 and drive to the bathing ghats after which he will have a darshan of Lord Lakshmi Narasimha Swamy before returning to the State capital.
