Ganesh Visarjan 2026 Vidhi: Uttar Puja, Nirmalya and Eco-Friendly Visarjan (25 September)

2026-08-25

Visarjan is a farewell, not a disposal. The uttar puja before the murti is lifted, the kshama prarthana, why nirmalya must not go into the water, and how to do a real visarjan in a bucket at home on 25 September 2026.

Sthapana gets all the planning — the samagri list, the muhurat, the chowki. Visarjan gets improvised: a truck, a crowd, and a murti that goes into the water with the marigolds still around its neck. In the shastra the departure is the more formal half of the ceremony. You invited a guest for a fixed number of days; now you have to see him off properly.

This article is only about that vidhi. For which day your family should do visarjan — 1.5, 3, 5, 7 or 10 days — and why the tenth-day visarjan lands on Friday, 25 September 2026, see our separate Ganeshotsav 2026 visarjan dates guide.

Uttar puja: the step almost everyone skips

Before the murti is lifted, it gets one last complete puja. This is uttar puja — the closing puja, the counterpart to the pran-pratishtha you did on sthapana day. Nothing about it is elaborate:

• Light the diya and agarbatti as you have every morning of the utsav.
• Offer akshat, haldi-kumkum, durva, a fresh flower and the last modak or laddu.
• Do the aarti — the same one your household has sung all week.
• Offer the final naivedya. Many Maharashtrian homes then tie sweets, a coconut and a coin into a small cloth bundle and place it with the murti — food for the journey.

Uttar puja is what releases the invited presence and returns the murti to clay. Skip it and the lifting is just moving furniture.

Kshama prarthana: asking for forgiveness

Immediately after the aarti comes the part that gives the ritual its weight. You fold your hands and admit, aloud, everything that went wrong — the mantras mispronounced, the offerings forgotten, the impatience, the morning somebody overslept and skipped the puja. The verse used is the one that closes almost every Hindu puja:

Avahanam na janami na janami visarjanam / Pujam chaiva na janami kshamyatam parameshwara — "I do not know how to invite you, I do not know how to send you away, I do not even know how to worship you. Forgive me, Lord."

Say it in Sanskrit if you can and in your own language if you cannot. The admission is the point, not the pronunciation.

"Pudhchya varshi lavkar ya"

Then the shout: Ganpati Bappa Morya, pudhchya varshi lavkar ya — "Ganpati Bappa Morya, come early next year." Two honest notes about it.

First, it is a Marathi folk custom, not a shastric injunction — you will not find it in any puja-paddhati. It travelled out of Maharashtra with the public Ganeshotsav and is now shouted from Hyderabad to Delhi, which is a fine thing, but no visarjan is incomplete without it.

Second, "Morya" is not a name for Ganesha. It comes from Morya Gosavi, the Ganapatya saint of Chinchwad near Pune. The chant puts the devotee's name in front of the deity's, which is the theology of the whole utsav in four syllables.

Lifting and carrying the murti

• Lift with both hands from the base — never by the head, trunk or arms.
• Turn the murti to face the house as it leaves. The guest walks out looking back at his hosts.
• Carry it on a clean cloth, a decorated thali or a palkhi — not in a plastic bag or a carton.
• Do not set the murti down on bare ground on the way to the water.
• The sweets and coconut travel with the murti. The puja leftovers do not go into the water — see the nirmalya section below.

Timings on Anant Chaturdashi, 25 September 2026

Shukla Chaturdashi of Bhadrapada runs from 11:18 pm on 24 September to 11:07 pm on 25 September, so a tenth-day visarjan should be finished before that. The nakshatra that day is Shatabhisha and the Moon is in Kumbha. Delhi windows:

Abhijit muhurta in Delhi is 11:48 am – 12:36 pm, but exactly half of it — 11:48 to 12:12 — sits inside Rahu Kaal that day, so it is not a clean choice.

Your city's sunrise is not Delhi's

Choghadiya and Rahu Kaal are divisions of the day from sunrise to sunset, so every window above moves with your local sunrise. On 25 September 2026:

Kolkata's sunrise is 64 minutes earlier than Ahmedabad's, and its Rahu Kaal starts 63 minutes earlier and is more than two-thirds over by the time Ahmedabad's begins. All times above are Delhi/IST unless the city is named; check your own city before fixing the hour. You can do that on our daily panchang and Rahu Kaal pages.

Nirmalya, and why it should not go in the water

Nirmalya is everything already offered: flowers, garlands, durva, bel leaves, the used cloth, kumkum, leftover naivedya. There is a genuine rule here and it is worth stating precisely. Nirmalya is not to be reused, stepped over, or thrown into the household bin. That is the rule. It says nothing about rivers.

The habit of tipping nirmalya into water comes from an older world in which the offerings were leaves and flowers and the water was a flowing river. Today one garland carries dyed thread, staples, plastic net and often a polythene wrapper, and the "river" in most cities is a lake or a municipal tank. The flowers sink and rot; the plastic does not. The nirmalya kalash drums placed at visarjan ghats in Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur and many other cities exist exactly for this, and what they collect is composted.

1. Separate the organic material — flowers, leaves, durva, fruit — from thread, wire, staples, plastic and thermocol.
2. Put the organics into the nirmalya kalash, or compost them at home in a pot of soil.
3. Cotton puja cloth and janeu: dry them, then compost or bury them at the base of a tree.
4. Non-biodegradable decoration goes into the ordinary dry waste. This is not disrespect — it was never nirmalya to begin with.

If someone tells you the shastra requires flowers to go into a river, ask them for the verse. There isn't one.

Eco-friendly visarjan that is still a real visarjan

Visarjan means dissolution. The requirement is that the murti dissolves in water, after uttar puja and with sankalp. Nothing in the vidhi specifies a river.

For a home visarjan: fill the bucket with clean water, do the uttar puja and kshama prarthana, then lower the murti in slowly with both hands while the aarti is sung. Then leave it alone. Shadu clay usually softens within a few hours and is down by the next morning; heavily painted murtis take much longer and plaster-of-Paris may never fully dissolve. Do not lift a half-dissolved murti back out.

What to do with the water afterwards

This is the question nobody answers. Once the murti has dissolved you have a bucket of muddy water — and it is tirtha, not waste.

• Let the sediment settle overnight.
• Pour the water at the base of a tulsi plant, a tree, or into a garden bed. It goes back into the earth, which is what visarjan means.
• Mix the clay sediment into a pot of soil. Some families keep a handful and work it into next year's murti.
• Avoid the drain where you can, and never a storm-water outlet if the murti was painted.

If the murti was plaster-of-Paris, do not pour that water into soil either. Let it settle, hand the solids to the municipal collection point, and buy shadu or paper-pulp next year.

A few honest answers

• Can visarjan be done after sunset? Yes. Evening and night immersions are the norm for large processions and there is no prohibition.
• Is a permanent metal or stone Ganesha ever immersed? No. Those are for daily worship. Only the murti installed for the utsav is immersed.
• Can we do it a day late? A day early is better than a day late. If the family missed it, do the uttar puja and immerse the next morning without inventing a penance.

To confirm the tithi window for your own city, use our tithi calendar.