HYDERABAD: The Hyderabad city police, who have been breaking their heads for the last three years to bring down the time taken for immersing Ganesha idols, have finally found a solution to it: a small piece of machine called Quick Release Device (QRD). The brainchild of a Hyderabad based engineer T Muralidhar, the QRD is expected to save at least half of money spent by TS government and also a day’s time in immersing the idols. Taking a cue from the principle of Buoyancy, QRD will soon replace the iron hooks used by cranes during idol immersion.
The object, having greater density than the fluid in which it is submerged, will sink faster. For long, idol immersion has been a painful procedure for TS government and especially civil and traffic police, who are forced to stand for days together to ease traffic hindrances. Now, hooks designed with the releasing mechanism will help bring down the time taken to release the idol into the water. What earlier used to take three minutes, as the hooks that hold the idol could not be controlled by crane operator, will now be reduced to around six seconds.
A senior official said: “For last three years we have been experimenting with ways to reduce immersion time. Immersion of idols continues for over 40 hours, which creates severe traffic hindrances and increases our expenditure,” he said. In past years, though idols were brought to on scheduled time, immersing them was a tough task as releasing idols stuck with hooks consumed about four minutes, said official.
Cops hope to finish immersion process in 12 hrs
With a total of 15,000 idols over five feet height in the city to be immersed in, police hope to finish
the process with a maximum of 12 hours this year. Earlier, it took 60,000 minutes by 25 cranes to complete a process, with each crane taking 40 hours, increasing the financial burden on the state government, said the DCP. The officer calls it a revolutionary model acquired by the city police. The experiment on Sunday night worked well and around 100 QRDs for 25 cranes will be purchased by the city police, he added.