During French President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Varanasi earlier this month, a strange thing happened. The ghats were beautifully decked up with flower pots, but then, mere spectators started taking them away. The earthen pots were unsupervised, so people felt fit to take them away without any fear of the consequences after the visit.
This episode could remind one of a very similar incident when a lot more people were found taking away around 1000 freshly-made cots over their heads after the conclusion of the Congress party’s khaat sabha in Uttar Pradesh in 2016. The Congress though cared little for the bamboo cots. The Varanasi Municipal Corporation, on the other hand, thought differently in the case of the stolen flower pots.
Purposefully, the cot-lifters were pardoned for their erroneous deeds at that time. But, the Varanasi episode turned out a little more bothersome for the flower pot-lifters. They were told to return the ‘stolen’ flower pots, and this novel idea even worked to some extent. The people, especially those living in localities adjacent to the ghats, returned the flower pots.
However, just as the security personnel left, along the route to the VIP fleet beside the Assi Ghat and the Dassasumedh Ghat in Varanasi, some people picked up flower pots procured from privately owned nurseries.
The Varanasi Municipal Corporation had put as many as 6,000 plants for decorating the area. A large number of flower pots were said to have been damaged or crushed on the roads. Not more than 3,500 flower pots were collected.
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