The Amaravathi pushkar ghat, meant for devotees to take dips in the Krishna river and to be developed as a tourist hot spot, has borne the brunt of official neglect and rising pollution levels.
Shattered liquor bottles, battered clothes, crushed cans, broken pots and tattered polythene bags coiled into balls dot the 1.5-km ghat here and bob over stagnant water in pools on the riverbed, now almost dry.
“Earlier in 2009, when the water level was higher, I along with my family members used to enjoy pleasure boat rides here. The water was cleaner and limpid and we didn’t have to go far to take dips,” says Satish Reddy Syamala, visiting the ghat from Vijayawada with four friends.
Wary of taking dips in the river now as both Amaravathi and Dharanikota spill sewage through four pipes into it, just the sight of hyacinth and algae mixed with human and animal excreta along the Amareswara temple makes them cringe. Visitors are forced to walk 500 metre away from the temple to take dips and perform rites in a pool seemingly less polluted.
And on the other side, more than 700 decaying Ganesh idols, made of plaster of Paris (PoP), immersed during the Vinayaka Chaturthi last year, represent a wasteland.
Though the ghat and a bund, to be built at a cost of ₹8 crore, were commissioned for the Krishna Pushkaramulu in August 2016, only 80% of the work had been completed, according to an Amaravathi panchayat official.
‘Contractor left the job’
Referring to dug out pits and rusting rods jutting out from concrete slabs on the ghat, a senior official of the Irrigation Department says, “We paid the contractor ₹7 crore, but the firm went bankrupt and abandoned the site. It filed a preclosure report last month. We will initiate action against the agency as it has a legal obligation to finish the project.”
Meanwhile, the local panchayat and the Irrigation department are passing the buck to each other for its maintenance and completion.
While the department’s official says there was no use of completing the construction of the ghat as the festival was over, panchayat officials blame the government for dearth of funds and manpower to maintain the ghat.
Refuting claims of panchayat officials that the Irrigation department was responsible for maintaining the ghat, the department’s official says, “We are engineers and can carry out only structural repairs. It is the responsibility of users, the civic body, to maintain the ghat. We’ve built around 60 ghats in the district and in each case, the users have taken charge. How do you expect us to visit the site and clean it every day?”
Despite being incomplete, the ghat, that Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu said would be developed into a tourist spot, is being used by walkers and visited by tourists.
This aside, drunkards visit the ghat at nights and often smash bottles on the pavement. Moreover, several missing slabs on the granite pavement are indicative of minimal, if not lack of, oversight, says M.V. Ramana, a walker.
Local walkers, including Mr. Ramana, have formed a voluntary group to clean the ghat. “We want to make the ghat clean and safe. Today, women walkers are wary of visiting the ghat in the evenings owing to a perceived lack of safety,” he says.
