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Durga Puja organisers frame norms on how to hold week-long festival amid Covid-19
The list of dos and don’ts includes reducing the size of pandals and idols so that they could be sanitized, restricting the number of pandal hoppers to 25 at a time, less of decorative lighting to discourage crowding at night and allowing food stalls in pandal premises sans any seating arrangements among others.
With less than 100 days remaining for Durga Puja – Bengal’s biggest festival – the state’s only forum of puja organizers has drawn up detailed guidelines on how the festival may be held by maintaining social distancing norms despite the Covid-19 pandemic.
The list of dos and don’ts includes reducing the size of pandals and idols so that they could be sanitized, restricting the number of pandal hoppers to 25 at a time, less of decorative lighting to discourage crowding at night and allowing food stalls in pandal premises sans any seating arrangements among others.
“We can’t predict what the situation would be like in October-end, but puja would be held for sure. The question is whether the week-long festival can be organized with pomp and grandeur as it provides livelihood to lakhs of people. We are being optimistic and have prepared the guidelines with the presumption that the festival will be held,” said Saswata Basu, general secretary of the Forum for Durgotsab and general secretary of one of the big-budget pujas in north Kolkata.
Out of the 4,500-odd community pujas held in the city, the forum has under its banner more than 370 of the most prominent and biggest pujas, including the ones that are patronized by some senior ministers of the ruling Trinamool Congress government
Even Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was apparently keen on organizing the festival this year despite the Covid-19 pandemic. Lakhs of people hit the streets every day during the festival hopping from one pandal to another.
“Durga Puja is coming. We have to organize it. For that we have to stay fit from now,” she had said on Wednesday while addressing local clubs to ensure that every citizen wears masks so that the virus could be checked.
This year Durga Puja begins on October 22 and ends on October 26. Mahalaya, an occasion that usually precedes Puja by a week, falls on September 17 this year.
“The 17-point code prepared by the forum also calls for offering only whole fruits to the goddess, less of interior decoration and more airy pandals which can be seen from outside, thermal guns and sanitizers to be kept at pandals. No visitors would be allowed without wearing a face mask,” said Partha Ghosh, a member of the forum’s executive committee and general secretary of one of the prominent pujas in south Kolkata.
The forum members will soon approach the state government with the proposed guidelines but believe that it has already reached the Chief Minister as she had expressed her keenness on organ sing the festival a day after the guidelines were circulated among the members of the forum.
“It is too early to say and forecast anything on how the situation could pan out in October-end. Situations are evolving very fast and Covid-19 cases are rising,” said a senior official of the state health department.
