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CALCUTTA, INDIA, August 28, 2004: Puja organizers this year will have to pay a fee for immersing icons in the Hooghly, neighborhood ponds and lakes. The decision has been taken at a recent meeting between the police and the state pollution control board (PCB). Officials said the funds raised by Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC) and other civic bodies around the city would be spent on maintaining the waterbodies and checking pollution. “We’ll soon send a circular in this regard to the CMC and other civic bodies,” said a PCB official. Mayor Subrata Mukherjee, also chief organizer of a community puja in south Calcutta, said the civic body was yet to receive any circular. “The CMC doesn’t mind charging puja organizers for immersing icons. But we have to offer them some service in return. Otherwise, the organizers will feel unnecessarily burdened. I request the government to hold a meeting with the CMC,” he added. PCB officials pointed out that the straw-and-bamboo frames of the icons, clothes and decorative pieces, including garlands, pollute the river, lakes and ponds. The green board, however, will not fix the fee. “It will be decided by the civic authorities in consultation with the organizers,” a police officer said.

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