HYDERABAD: A public interest litigation petition was filed in the Telangana High Court seeking direction to the State government to take immediate steps restraining idol makers from wrapping idols of Ganesh with plastic sheets. It alleged that the government had failed to regulate the indiscriminate use of plastic wrapping of Ganesh idols being sold in the city and surrounding areas for the forthcoming Ganesh festival.
Petitioner YS Murali Krishna, a resident of the city, submitted that usage of plastic sheets to wrap Ganesh idols is causing irreversible damage to the environment and would adversely affect the future generations. Due to lack of regulation by the authorities concerned, the thin plastic sheet which is cheap and abundantly available in the market, will result in generation of huge plastic waste causing damage to the eco-system. Most of the Ganesh idols are sold in openly on the roads wherein the vendors wrap the idols in thin transparent plastic covers with thickness below the permitted 50 microns.