Pune: The grand immersion procession that marks the end of Ganeshotsav in the city wound up at 4.47pm on Wednesday, 30 hours and 32 minutes after it began at 10.30am on Tuesday.
It was seven minutes longer than last year's 30 hours and 25 minutes. Maharashtra Tarun Mandal from Bhavani Peth was the last to immerse its idol. The Pune Police maintained that the procession wound up at 3pm on Wednesday when the last mandal reached Alka Talkies Chowk taking 28 hours and 45 minutes.
However, the mandal wound its way to Vateshwar Ghat opposite Congress Bhavan about half an hour later. The PMC fire brigade said that the procession ended at 4.47pm on Wednesday.
The main procession on Laxmi Road was twice held up at Belbaug Chowk —first around 4.30pm after Shrimant Dagdusheth Halwai Ganapati Trust's chariot left at 4pm, and then around 10.30pm on Tuesday when mandals did not agree on who should go first.
Police commissioner Amitesh Kumar said, "It was between the mandals. We intervened and resolved it but it took an hour-and-a-half before the procession resumed," Kumar said, adding that they wanted to give five to six mandals the right of passage in the one and a half hours, but managed only three to four mandals. Later in the night, three mandals entered the procession route on Laxmi Road from the lanes creating a bottleneck.
"In all, 16 mandals joined the route without informing our teams," a senior officer told TOI. Four mandals from Ganesh Road and Phadke Haud Chowk, who had early passes, were not allowed by the police to proceed on the immersion route. These mandals did not join the procession and carried their idols on their heads to the various ghats for immersion.
Police had to use mild force to get mandals to move between Vijay Talkies and Alka Talkies Chowk around 8am and 11am on Wednesday. About 850 mandals used the four routes for the procession — Laxmi Road, Kumthekar Road, Kelkar Road and Tilak Road which converge at Alka Talkies Chowk from where the procession moved to Vateshwar Ghat near Congress Bhavan via Garware Bridge, Good Luck Chowk and JM Road. A minor fire broke out in the chariot of Laxmi Road Cha Raja Mandal but its workers quickly put out the flames.
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