Volunteers, forest officials maintain peace at Sanjay Gandhi National Park

Well laid out plans and advance preparation helped forest officials maintain discipline at the Sanjay Gandhi National Park and Tungareshwar Sanctuary despite nearly five lakh devotees visiting temples inside the protected areas on the occasion of Mahashivratri on Thursday.

"This year even though there were more people the festival was strictly monitored. We kept a close watch on all the pandals and urged them to use cutlery made out of leaves. Last year there had been around 10 small fires but thankfully this year we had none", said Uday Dhage, assistant conservator of forest in-charge of the Tungareshwar area which receives maximum crowd.

The crowd had started pulling in from the evening of February 26 and after spending the night at the temples, they started dispersing by Thursday afternoon.

Nearly 200 volunteers assisted 300 forest staff in the vigilance of the forested areas.

The volunteers stationed themselves at every gate along with the forest staff and promptly seized any plastics, intoxicants or inflammable substances that the devotees had on person. "We had collected 15 gunny bags full of plastic and other confiscated articles including alcohol, gutka, beedi, cigarettes, bhang, lighters, marijuana, etc. The forest department did a very good job of monitoring the pandals this time", said Krishna Tiwari who was coordinating the volunteers.