Jamshedpur, Nov. 16: The Chief Minister Raghubar Das inspected Subarnarekha river ghats on Monday evening in view of the Chhath festival scheduled tomorrow. Along with East Singhbhum deputy commissioner Amitabh Kaushal, Dalbhum SDO Alok Kumar and Jusco officials, Das went to the various sites and reviewed the preparations.
The district administration will deploy 1,000 cops at various ghats in the city to maintain utmost safety and security for the Chhath devotees. All police stations have also been directed to remain open round-the-clock to deal with any emergency.
Sources informed that a three-tier security arrangement has been made for Jamshedpur wherein all the ghats would be under surveillance to monitor any dangerous or criminal activity.
Besides, the deployment of 1,000 cops, metal detectors will also be used at the ‘sensitive’ ghats to keep the criminals at bay, said an official.
Plainclothes policemen at the ghats and security officials on boats would be monitoring the situation from the river as experts divers would be nearby in case of any drowning incident.
In the light of devotees traditionally offering prayers to the Sun God taking dips into the river, the administration has resolved to identify safe places (Chhat ghats) for offering prayers along the two rivers.
Besides, the administration has decided to depute divers and life jackets in adequate strength at Chhat ghats.
In this connection, a meeting was held at the sub-divisional office wherein various agencies of the government along with town division officials of Jusco, city based utility services company, were present to prepare safety measures ahead of the popular festival.
Meanwhile, officials of Chhath Ghat Committee said that there is an urgent need to properly clean the river banks, and various water bodies on the occasion of the festival of Chhat Puja.
They said that people take bath in water tanks and rivers and therefore it is essential that the cleaning work of these water bodies is completed on time.
Several social and cultural organisations of the city have decided to set up canopies near the ghats to supply essential commodities to the devotees. Administration is barricading the danger zones and also putting up sign boards to caution the revelers visiting the riverbanks.
In 2006, eight youths, including three teenagers drowned into the Subernarekha River here during Chhat causing much embarrassment to the administration. Ironically, as the water level in the river is very low, the government had issued a directive to the Chandil dam authorities to release water in the Subernarekha River a day ahead of Chhat last year.
�This year the situation is just opposite so we are making adequate arrangements to make the festival an incident free celebration,� said a district administration official.
In addition to this, several of the non-government agencies are carrying out cleaning drive at the riverbanks to make the place clean for the devotees.
�At Kharkahi Riverbank are we have identified few Chhat ghats were our volunteers are carrying out the cleaning drive ahead of the festival,� Prakash Sharma said, volunteer of an NGO.