VIJAYAWADA: Vinayaka Chavithi was celebrated with traditional gaiety as hundreds of devotees thronged Lord Ganesh temples across the city and offered special puja on Friday. Several Ganesh temples in Vijayawada and Krishna district reverberated with chants of ‘Ganpati bappa Morya’.
Streets adorned a festive look with locals performing Ganesh Puja in pandals across the city. Scores of devotees assembled at Gymkhana Grounds, Gandhi Nagar to get a darshan of the 72-feet Mushika Vahana Ganesh Idol. Rituals started with Sri Lakshmi Ganapathi Maha Yagnam. Devotees also made beeline queues to the Ganesh Temple on Canal Road, where temple authorities offered the prasadam to the devotees.
P Srinivasa Sharma, a priest at Sri Bala Ganapathi mandir at I town, said that traditionally, the festival is observed in Bhadrapada month of the Hindu calender and therefore mostly falls between mid-August and mid-September on an annual basis. He further added after the first ritual is the Prana Pratishthawhich is followed ritual Shodashopachara (sixteen ways of paying tribute). The organisers of the pandals distributed prasadams to the devotees after the Ganesh puja.