Patna: The district administration has planned to felicitate all officers who have done "good work" and made this year's Chhath Puja better than ever. The district administration is in the process of finalising the names and they all will get awards and mementos from divisional commissioner Anand Kishor.

Kishor said: "I have decide to felicitate officers who have done good work during Chhath. There are around 150 names who will be felicitated but the obvious names are Patna district magistrate Sanjay Kumar Agarwal, Patna senior superintendent of police Manu Maharaaj, Patna Municipal Corporation commissioner Abhishek Singh, Bihar Urban Infrastructure Development Corporation Ltd managing director Amrendra Prasad Singh and traffic superintendent of police P.K. Das."

More than 70,000 police jawans and around 1,000 magistrates were deputed for the four-day Chhath festival in which around 15 lakh devotees were on the Ganga ghat to offer arghya.

These officers will be felicitated before November 15 which also includes 15 Chhath Committees who actively took part in making the festival successful by assisting the district administration.

Kishor said: "We have identified 15 Chhath Committees who not only contributed but also helped the administration in many ways. They were the one who gave essential inputs how to make the arrangement on ghats so that devotees get the maximum benefit. Even a silly mistake could have spoiled the show. Such a festival is always a team effort and without a joint effort, it cannot be successful."

Even devotees had heaped praise for the work of the district administration and said the arrangement were unprecedented.

All senior officers were on their toes round-the-clock and were continuously inspecting the ghats to ensure that all the preparations were well executed.

Kishor also said that on the concluding day of Chhath, he received many messages on his official cellphone number in which residents thanked him for making doing a good job.

"It was really a new experience for me that people were sending me SMSes and WhatsApp messages praising the work of the district administration," Kishor added.

On Friday, the divisional commissioner had instructed officials concerned to make this year's arrangements a standard operating procedure (SOP) for new officials to refer to during such events in future.