Spiritual ecstasy marked the Ganesh idol immersion ceremony, which remained largely peaceful and incident-free, thanks to the collective efforts put in by the Vinayaka festival committee members, city administrators, revenue and traffic police wings.
MLA B. Karunakar Reddy, who participated in a special puja offered to the deity installed on the Municipal Corporation of Tirupati (MCT) premises on Sunday, complimented Mayor R. Sireesha and Commissioner Anupama Anjali for setting an example for other civic bodies in the State by ensuring peaceful conduct of the immersion ceremony.
First auction of laddu
The temple city witnessed the first-ever auction of ‘Laddu’ offered to the deity, jointly bid by a businessman, Murali, and a corporate, Sravani Munirami Reddy, for ₹10.75 lakh.
Ms. Anupama Anjali said the amount would be deposited into the MCT account and used for next year’s Ganesh festival.
The idols were taken in a procession of tractors to ‘Vinayaka Sagar’, a water body located east of Tirupati, developed a decade back on the lines of Hyderabad’s Hussain Sagar to be used for Nimajjanotsavam every year.
Festival committee convener Samanchi Srinivas hailed the MCT for having set a new trend in leading the procession of idols.
The traffic police devised a route map and also put in place specific timings for the vehicles arriving from the northern, western and southern sides towards Karakambadi road. The procession did not cause much hindrance to the traffic, notwithstanding the construction work on at several places in the city.
