Bharatiya Janata Party

Pune Municipal Corporation

citizens

solar eclipse

Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti

Sandeep Khardekar, a(BJP) leader from the city, has made a unique demand to(PMC). Stating that thewould need to perform their ablutions after the upcomingon December 26, which happens to fall on the day of water cut in the city, Khardekar has appealed to the civic body not to implement the weekly water cut on Thursday this week since it coincides with the solar eclipse. He has written to PMC officials and has asked the party leaders from the civic body to take a note of his demands. Officials have, however, turned down his demand, stating that such religious beliefs cannot become the basis of deciding the maintenance work for implementing the water cuts.The civic body has announced that many parts of the city will not be getting water supply on Thursdays due to regular maintenance and repair work to be conducted at water purification centres and pumping stations. PMC has been doing these repair works every Thursday, which leads to water cut in the city to balance the amount of water supply that the city receives. But the BJP city vice president has written to the civic body officials, requesting them to roll back the water cuts for this week. This, he has claimed, should be done so that citizens have enough water to take a shower after the eclipse.Speaking to Mirror, Khardekar said, “Thursday is a no-moon day and the solar eclipse too also falls on the same day. According to Hindu practice, people traditionally take bath after an eclipse is over. They also tend to visit pilgrim sites like Pandharpur and take bath in the river there. But that will not be possible for the ones in Pune. If there is water cut, citizens will have to suffer. I have, therefore, requested the officials to roll back the cuts this week. I have also spoken to the leaders from my party and have asked them to talk to the administration regarding the demand.”Hamid Dabholkar, a member of(MANS), has called this an unfortunate move. “Solar and lunar eclipses are just a game of shadow which have no effect on daily lives. We are taught this quite early in school. Despite this, superstitions related to eclipse seem to continue. It has been proven that these celestial happenings do not affect human lives. We are campaigning and creating awareness on this issue. Such a demand coming from a leader in public life will take us backwards as a society. The leaders need to rethink his statement,” he said.PMC officials have stated that these demands will not be catered too. When asked, VG Kulkarni, head of PMC water supply department, said, “We need to cut off the water connections in order to carry out the routine maintenance work. If we don’t do the maintenance in time, then things might get complicated in the future. Also, we need to keep religious aspects out of this process; else, it will become difficult to function. We will have to discontinue the water supply on Thursday.”