The ongoing festival period is not just heightening the spirits of people; it is also increasing the size of the mounds of garbage already plaguing the city.
Plantain leaves and ash gourds that found no takers during Ayudha Puja lined the streets of popular market areas in the city, blocking traffic movement in some parts, painting a grim picture of the garbage collection and disposal system in the city post the festivities.
Even as the city celebrated Vijayadashami on Wednesday, the streets along N.R. Colony, Gandhi Bazaar, K.R. Market, Russell Market and Ulsoor Market greeted shoppers and motorists with uncleared mountains of wet waste from the festivities. The Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike’s (BBMP) garbage clearance trucks were seen at some places attempting to carry out the herculean task of ridding the roads of the rotting garbage.
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At K.R. Market, one of the biggest in the city, garbage heaps had risen to over seven feet high.
Khateeb, owner of a ceramics shop on S.J.P. Road, said that only one BBMP truck came on Tuesday to collect a week’s waste, when the requirement was of at least four.
Street vendors were blamed as major contributors to the garbage-lined roads. E. Harendra Babu Rao, resident of N.R. Colony, said that footpath vendors, mainly selling fruits and vegetables, would dispose of the waste wherever they set up business.
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Shivashankar S., a roadside vendor of home articles near the Gandhi Bazaar Circle, has had to carry out business on the footpath right in front of heaps of garbage on the road. He complained that he had lost some business due to the filth.
Segregation too went for a toss during the celebrations.
With the festival season continuing into the weekend with Bakrid falling on Saturday, fears of the problem compounding loom large.