Pune Ganesh Visarjan drew lakhs of devotees onto Laxmi Road, Tilak Road and the approaches to Alka Chowk on Friday, turning the city’s annual farewell procession into a night of intense crowds, traffic disruption, music and complaints over weak crowd control and noise-rule enforcement.
Devotees followed mandal processions carrying idols towards immersion points, with dhol-tasha pathaks providing the soundtrack through the evening. The procession continued late into the night as residents and visitors gathered to see some of Pune’s prominent Ganpati idols, including the idol of Shrimant Dagdusheth Halwai Ganpati.
For Nilesh Desai, a 29-year-old IT professional who moved to Pune from Satara around a decade ago, the procession remains an important annual ritual. He said he took a day off to attend the event and expected to stay for only a few hours, but continued walking behind the dhol-tasha groups until 1 am. Desai said the traffic congestion felt different during the immersion procession because he was participating in the crowds rather than travelling through them.
The experience was more difficult for some visitors. Madhuri Netake, a resident of Karve Nagar, said the crowd near Alka Chowk became difficult to navigate during the arrival of the Dagdusheth Ganpati procession. She said she and a friend were lifted off their feet in the rush and became separated briefly. Netake also said there was little room to move either forward or backwards and that the crowd-management arrangements remained a recurring concern near the junction.
Her account highlighted the immediate safety challenges created when large numbers of people converge on narrow or heavily occupied stretches of the procession route. Netake said the problem was particularly acute for women in the crowd and that residents had expected stronger barricading at Alka Chowk this year.
Noise regulation was another point of concern. Varsha Jadhav, a homemaker from Wakad, said the call by Pune civic authorities for a ban on DJs and restrictions on noise pollution was followed in some parts of the route. However, she said multiple DJs were still installed and that some sound systems remained excessively loud. According to Jadhav, enforcement appeared stronger on paper than along the main procession road.
The procession also featured traditional performances, including Vetra Charma, a martial art performed with a bamboo stick and a compact leather shield. Chinmay Pandhari of Shriram Vetra Charma Pathak said the tradition dates back to the era of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj and involves the use of the vetra and charma.
Residents continued to describe Pune’s Ganeshotsav as a festival shaped by generations of local participation, including dhol performances, idol-making and mandal activities. Akshay Killedar, a civil services aspirant from Shukrawar Peth, said the festival’s growth had outpaced the city’s traffic and civic planning capacity. The immersion procession concluded with the traditional farewell to the idols, while the experience renewed attention on crowd management, route planning and enforcement of noise restrictions during Pune’s largest annual public gathering.
