Siddhivinayak Darshan: With illegal stalls gone, everyone will queue up

Action comes after racket where devotees had to pay extra to avoid waiting in line to enter sanctum was exposed

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has taken stern action against illegal stalls on the premises of Siddhivinayak temple in Dadar, demolishing 15 of them in one day. In October, mid-day exposed a racket, allegedly run by flower sellers and certain temple staffers, where large sums of money were demanded from devotees to allow them to carry out ‘VVIP darshans’. The Dadar police registered an FIR after the temple authorities informed the police about this.

According to Dadar residents, the stalls had been operating from the temple compound for the past decade and the people running them were involved in the VVIP darshan racket in connivance with staffers. After mid-day brought the matter to light more than two months ago, the temple trust took stern steps and even registered an FIR against those who had been exposed by this newspaper.

A crowd of devotees outside Siddhivinayak temple. File Pic/Sameer Markande

“This has been one of the biggest raids in the past few years. The BMC tried to remove encroachments in the past, but not to such an extent, especially with New Year round the corner and lots of devotees thronging the temple to seek Lord Ganesha’s blessings,” said a resident on the condition of anonymity According to sources, Siddhivinayak temple is the biggest such holy site in Mumbai and is visited by devotees from various parts of the country.

“The authorities should continue to act against Illegal stalls that have gradually mushroomed. While regular people couldn’t even take laptops and cameras inside, stalls were being run on the temple premises. It is also a severe security concern and the temple authorities don’t have any knowledge about it. Those who run the stalls fleece devotees by overcharging them for flowers and prasad,” a source said.

BMC Speak

G North ward Assistant Municipal Commissioner Prashant Sapkale told mid-day, “We have the right to take action within and outside the temple compound. We received information from our officials that many illegal stalls had sprung up on as well as beyond the premises of the temple. We instructed our encroachment department and removed all of them.”

The illegal stalls that once stood on the premises of Siddhivinayak temple in Dadar. Pics/Shirish Vaktania

Chairman’s words

Sada Sarvankar, chairman of the Shree Siddhivinayak Ganpati Mandir Trust and a Shiv Sena (Shinde faction) MLA, said, “I took the charge as chairman a month back. I am collecting all the details concerning illegal stalls inside and outside the temple area. We are determined to remove all of them.”

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