Patna DM Manish Kumar inspects Bhadra Ghat in Patna City on Thursday. Picture by Sachin

Puja organisers are flouting power safety norms at will, posing threat to revellers in the festive season.

Several pandals are dangerously close to electric wires, poles and transformers. Naked wires a few inches away from pandals, bamboos beside the electric poles and wires criss-crossing pandals are common sights in the city.

Live wires close to the pandals pose fire threat. In 2012, a pandal on Boring Road was reduced to ashes following short-circuit. Live wires passed just a few inches away from it.

Such dangerous pandals are aplenty this year in Khajpura, Kankerbagh, Boring Road, Ashiana Nagar and Digha.

“The restriction regarding distance of the pandal from the low-tension wires across the city is minimum 5ft. Also, Puja organisers have to take temporary power connection. This enables us to ascertain load capacity of a pandal and equivalent load is supplied to that circuit. It also prevents short-circuit because of overloading in case of unauthorised connections. The executive engineers of different circles have been apprised of the charges for temporary connection in the range of 1KW to 20KW for different sizes of pandals,” said Rajiv Amit, the general manager (GM) of Patna Electric Supply Undertaking (Pesu).

A few Puja organisers in the city claimed to have followed the norms. “We have taken proper power connection for our pandal and also got wires passing in front of our pandal covered with PVC pipes. Moreover, we are also installing closed-circuit television cameras for ensuring safety here,” said Sanjeev Prasad Tony, the president of Navyuvak Durga Puja Samiti, Dakbungalow Road.

Pesu GM Rajiv claimed that control rooms had been constituted in different divisions. They would have vigilance teams to check power thefts and close proximity of pandals to electric wires, poles and transformers. Short-circuit threat apart, loudspeakers attached with amplifiers at most pandals and even at houses have created pandemonium-like situation all over the city with the commencement of Navratri from Thursday.

Some citizens appeared annoyed with the disturbing noise. “For the third consecutive year, the house next to mine has installed loudspeakers for Navratri. They start blaring music as early as 5 in the morning and I cannot sleep well. I don’t understand the need of such pandemonium,” said Arpita, a resident of Ram Nagari Colony.

Bihar State Pollution Control Board (BSPCB) said the sound coming out of the loudspeakers was above the permissible limit. Sources in BSPCB claimed that a patrolling team would move across the city till late night from October 1 to 3 to check the noise-level.

“Central Pollution Control Board asks all the states to monitor the noise pollution during festivals. The sound levels are normally monitored from Saptami to Dashami. We use sound-level meter to measure the noise of different types of sound systems at pandals. The monitoring is also done at our five ambient noise monitoring stations across the city,” said G.K. Mandal, in- charge, noise monitoring, BSPCB.