The greenery of the temple city suffers a setback as the Ganesh idols get taller and taller. Ahead of the Ganesh immersion festival, the arterial roads leading to the Vinayaka Sagar (Lingalamma Cheruvu) lost their cool shade, as the axe-wielding workers of the Municipal Corporation of Tirupati (MCT) struck the trees and indiscriminately chopped off several branches. Many trees on Tilak Road, which stretched their branches right up to the median to provide respite to pedestrians and motorists from the hot sun, were reduced to the level of trunks, with the ‘axe-happy’ workers mercilessly cutting off the branches on Saturday.
Request from organisers
The Tirupati Vinayaka Festival Committee is an umbrella body of festival organisers, political leaders, police, municipal corporation and TUDA officials, formed to ensure coordinated effort in making arrangements for the festival, right from installation of street corner idols to the immersion ceremony. “Many mandapam organisers (the local committees that installed Vinayaka idols in colonies) made a request to us to clear the branches protruding on the road for the easy transportation of the huge idols, which we forwarded to the civic body,” says P. Naveen Kumar Reddy, a member of the festival committee.
He, however, denies knowledge of who has given the go-ahead for the axing of trees to the extent of reducing them to stumps. It is another matter that the procession of Ganesh idols on Sunday turned out to be a smooth affair.
