The tradition of immersing idols may soon be ripped off puja celebrations with the National Green Tribunal (NGT) taking cognizance of an application by environment activist Subhas Datta, seeking a ban on this ‘method’. Datta refuses to call idol immersion a ‘ritual’.
In his application, the activist claimed that the ‘ritual part of immersion’ is completed at the place of worship itself. According to him, immersion processions and the ‘throwing’ of idols into rivers have now become superfluous, gorgeous, colourful, competitive and polluting, which aren’t backed by religious necessity.
