Balapur Ganesh Draws Devotees with Puri Jagannath Temple-Themed Pandal

After the towering Ganesh idol in Khairatabad, Balapur Ganesh is the most famous in Hyderabad. This year, pandal modeled as Puri Jagannath temple was put up to attract devotees. “We finalized the Puri temple concept after deliberations with our committee members. We started the work two months before the festival and completed it by September 12,” Balapur Ganesh Utsav Samithi Chairman K Niranjan Reddy told Deccan Chronicle on Tuesday

Last year, the organizers put up a pandal replicating Swarnagiri Sri Venkateswara Swamy temple in Bhuvanagiri. Earlier, the organizers put up the models of temples like Tirupati, Arunachalam, Ayodhya Ram Mandir and others in Balapur.

According to samithi, Hyderabad is synonymously called as Bhagayanagar. The Bhagayanagar Utsava Samithi has declared that the Ganesh idols which were worshiped in the villages of Ranga Reddy could be immersed in tank bund.

Balapur Ganesh was first to accept this invitation from Ranga Reddy district in 1980 and was the first to acquire permissions regarding the same. From 1980, Balapur Ganesh is being immersed in Tank Bund and is aptly given the name “praramba grama vinayakudu” – ‘The idol which commences the main Ganesh immersion procession in Hyderabad.’

From 1980 to 1982, the Balapur Ganesh immersion festival ended peacefully but in the year 1983, it has undergone some communal disputes creating fear in the minds of the people of Hyderabad regarding religious festivals.

Not wanting to break the tradition of the festival, the Ganesh Mandap was setup by the Ganesh Utsav Samithi in 1984, following curfew in 1983. However, the Hyderabad police provided the village with huge security force with numbers reaching to 400.

And every year, this seems to be increasing proportionately as the number of people visiting the village is increasing. With the help of police and the blessings of Lord Ganesha, every immersion from 1984 has been successful and peaceful.

These features led to the awarding of another name to Balapur Ganesha - “Adhi Vinayaka”. The auctioning of laddu began in 1994 with the first winner Kollan Mohan Reddy winning the auction at Rs.450. This tradition continued year after year, and once the auction began reaching thousands, the initial bid amount was set to Rs.1,116 by samithi.

This first auctioning in Balapur led to the ‘Laddu Bidding’ becoming a procedure in several Ganesh mandaps.