Devotees in Mumbai and Pune bid farewell to Lord Ganesha on Tuesday with low key celebrations. The visarjan or immersion, which is generally a huge grandeur in Pune, Mumbai was a low-key amid the spread of novel coronavirus.

On the 10th day of Ganesh Chaturthi, Lord Ganesha’s idol is immersed in water, known as Ganesh Visarjan.

For the last day of the Ganesh Festival, more than 35,000 police personnel were deployed in the financial capital and the Mumbai administration (BMC) also made arrangements for incident-free immersion of idols.

On the other side, Pune administration which banned immersion processions had directed mandals in the city to immerse idols in the premises of the pandals. The Ganesh idol of first Manacha Ganpati Kasba Ganesh Mandal was placed in a palanquin was immersed in the water tank in the premises with chants of Ganpati Bappa Morya. Also, idol of Shrimant Dagdusheth Halwai Ganpati was immersed in the water tank which mandal created at their site. The Pune police had also deployed police personnel at several ghats along Mutha river to keep eye on violations.

In a bid to prevent crowding on the last day, the police force had appealed to people not perform aarti at the spots of visarjan. Devotees were asked to perform aarti at home before stepping out for visarjan in Mumbai. The state government too advised mandals in cities to take care and ensure the COVID-19 rules are followed.