Thane's Ganeshotsav numbers this year tell an uncomfortable story for the civic body. At the artificial lake near Ashtavinayak Chowk in Kopri, built specifically to keep idols out of natural water, only 88 statues were immersed. A few kilometres away at the Thane Creek ghat near Chendani Koliwada Port, 525 went straight into the water.

That's roughly six creek immersions for every one at the lake. Devotees, it seems, still want the real thing.

Environmental researchers in the city say this isn't a surprise so much as a warning the Thane Municipal Corporation keeps ignoring. Dr. Prashant Sinkar, who studies immersion patterns locally, argues the fix isn't forcing people toward artificial tanks that clearly aren't working. "When devotee preferences are so clearly defined, it is imperative to reconsider our approach to eco-friendly immersions," he said, adding that the city needs a permanent, scientifically built setup along the creek itself for those who won't use a tank no matter what.

The bigger problem is the paperwork

Here's where it gets murkier. The TMC's official count puts total immersions at 20,703 across the artificial lakes, iron tanks and collection centres it runs, split as 9,600 clay idols and 11,103 made of plaster of paris. Fine numbers on paper.

Except nobody seems certain whether the 525 creek immersions at Chendani Koliwada made it into that tally at all. And if they did, who decided which of those idols counted as clay and which as PoP, given there was no local material breakdown to go on? The city's Pollution Control Department, asked to explain, offered a fairly bare response: the figures came straight from ward-level Assistant Commissioners. Not exactly a paper trail.

That gap matters more than it sounds. PoP idols don't dissolve the way shadu mati clay does, they sit in the water leaching chemicals for weeks. If the classification is guesswork dressed up as data, the city has no real idea how much PoP is going into the creek versus what's being managed through its collection points.

Advocates pushing for reform want the TMC to look at Talaopali's Datta Ghat as a model, a permanent immersion facility that's actually engineered for the job rather than cordoned off and hoped for. The argument is straightforward. If people are going to choose the creek anyway, year after year, the least the civic body can do is build something there that doesn't leave everyone guessing about what went into the water.

Whether that conversation goes anywhere before next year's Ganeshotsav, or gets filed away like this year's numbers, is the open question the TMC hasn't answered yet.