A Kolkata Municipal Corporation official stated that devotees offered puja on river banks at seven ghats along the Hooghly before sunset.
Across the city, devotees offered puja in 50 waterbodies where temporary ghats were built by the KMC.
Unlike in 2019, when a section of Chhath devotees barged into Rabindra Sarobar and Subhas Sarobar in south and north Kolkata, respectively, violating a National Green Tribunal order about not using the waters of the lake for the rituals, this year not a single devotee was seen at both places on Sunday.
Over 300 policemen were deployed to man the gates of two lakes which were closed from 6am Sunday and will remain so till 4pm on Monday, an official of Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA), the custodian of the two waterbodies, said.
“It is reassuring that people have become conscious about environmental issues,” a West Bengal Pollution Control Board official said.
Several groups of devotees arrived at the ghats to the accompaniment of loud music.
Chhath Puja at a temporary ghat near Panditiya Road.
Soumyajit DeyThe sound of firecrackers was heard since the afternoon in areas such as Tollygunge, Naktala, Patuli, Bhowanipore, Chetla, Beleghata, Cossipore and Narkeldanga areas of the city, environmentalists claimed.
Environmentalist Somendra Mohan Ghosh said, “Sunday was the first phase of Chhath when PCB fireworks’ bursting schedule was violated by some revellers but we are not sure if the police or the PCB took any note.”
A WBPCB official said the air quality across the city remained at a ‘satisfactory’ level and no major case of sound violation has been received in the control room.
In Asansol, Trinamool Congress MP Shatrughan Sinha participated in the celebrations.
