In what will have a direct impact on the upcoming festivals, the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court, on Thursday, ordered that idols of Lord Ganesh and Goddess Durga that are made of plaster of Paris (POP) will not be sold as ‘idols’ but as ‘objects’.
The bench comprising Justices Sunil Shukre and Anil Kilor has allowed selling of these idols on the condition that the sellers inform devotees that these idols cannot be worshipped or immersed during the festivals.
This comes, after a petition was filed by some idol makers, challenging the May 2020 guidelines by which the Union government that banned the use of PoP in making idols. They claimed that already more than four lakh idols have been made and are ready for sale.
The bench, however, noted that a similar ban was imposed in 2012, wherein the HC had allowed them to sell such idols but on a condition that they won’t be making them in the future.
“This would mean that the sale of PoP idols was not permitted after 2012. Therefore, we are not willing to accept the contention that the present ban on these idols has come suddenly and it has caught the petitioners unawares and it has the potential of adversely affecting their financial interest,” the bench said.
“However, we find it necessary to protect the financial interest of the petitioners who have already manufactured multiple PoP idols,” the judges said.
“We will permit the petitioners to sell these idols only as PoP objects and not as idols on the condition that while selling these objects, the petitioners must inform the buyers that they are not intended for any kind of worship, nor to be immersed in any water body.”
The bench further ordered the makers to submit an undertaking that they will not sell these objects during Ganesh festival or any other festival in the future and “that they, henceforth, would stop making PoP idols of any deity”.
“Then there is also an issue about permitting idols made up of biodegradable material like clay and the like to be disposed of by immersion in natural or man-made water bodies, the water of which isused for human and animal consumption, as their immersion in such water-bodies is also not without harmful effects on water and food sources due to use of toxic oil paints for decorating these idols,” the judges noted.
Accordingly, the bench took up suo motu PIL on this issue. "Therefore, we are of the view that all these issues are required to be taken up for their consideration by this Court, they having their impact on larger public interest. We thus deem it necessary to take up these issues in public interest."
