Delhi marks end of Chhath with prayers, clean-up drive

Delhi cabinet ministers Manjinder Singh Sirsa, Kapil Mishra and Ravinder Indraj Singh, along with other officials, were also in attendance

New Delhi

CM Rekha Gupta takes part in the clean-up drive at Vasudev Ghat. (Sanjeev Verma/HT Photo)

Devotees on Tuesday marked the conclusion of the Chhath Puja, by offering prayers to the rising sun, alongside chief minister Rekha Gupta, who took part in the prayers at Haathi Ghat on the Yamuna near the ITO. Gupta said she was “delighted to witness the enthusiasm of people” and that she prayed for a “Viksit Bharat and Viksit Delhi.”

Delhi cabinet ministers Manjinder Singh Sirsa, Kapil Mishra and Ravinder Indraj Singh, along with other officials, were also in attendance.

“This is not merely a religious observance but a symbol of a new Delhi that stands at the intersection of culture and cleanliness, reverence and service,” CM Gupta said.

Chhath Puja is a four-day festival celebrated by people of the Purvanchali community from Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh. The community is estimated to account for one-third of Delhi’s population. The festival involves the offering of “arghya” by fasting devotees to the sun in knee-deep water on designated days.

Clean-up, politics

The Delhi government and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) launched a clean-up drive at over 1,100 ghats set up across the city. Gupta took part in a drive at the Vasudev Ghat near Kashmiri Gate while Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Virendra Sachdeva, along with Delhi mayor Raja Iqbal Singh, launched the corporation’s cleanliness drive at ITO Chhath Ghat.

Mayor Iqbal Singh said that special cleanliness teams were deployed in all zones to undertake intensive cleaning, desilt drains, remove garbage, and wash ghats.

Sachdeva said that the municipal corporation has been given four working days to complete the cleaning of all Chhath ghats. “All BJP MPs, MLAs, and councillors in Delhi are conducting symbolic campaigns at various ghats today to motivate the staff,” he said.

On the day, the Aam Aadmi Party’s Delhi chief, Saurabh Bharadwaj, held a press conference, accusing the BJP government of creating a “fake Yamuna” to falsely portray that it had been cleaned up. Bharadwaj also attacked the government for allegedly manipulating air quality index (AQI) data.

Since 2021, the Delhi government had not allowed prayers in the Yamuna, and set up alternative ghats in water bodies and artificial ponds near parks. This year, 17 model ghats were set up, returning the festival back to the floodplains. The festival also comes close to the Bihar elections scheduled early next month.