Even Saraswati puja went the Durga puja way in CC Block, New Town, with two pujas being organised by rival bodies.
What was even more eye-catching this time was the sight of both pandals coming up on the same ground, with barely four feet separating the wall of a pandal and a cloth demarcating the boundary of the other.
For the last two years, the block had been seeing two Durga pujas being held, one on the ground demarcated by the New Town Kolkata Development Authority for Puja and the other on a private empty plot of land.
“The two pandals were so close that had anjali been held at approximately the same time, devotees in one would have got distracted by the chanting of mantra in the other. By sheer coincidence that did not happen,” said a resident, who preferred not to be named.
The two warring bodies are New Town CC Block Puja Samity and the New Town CC Block Residents’ Welfare Association. As reported earlier in The Telegraph Salt Lake, the two are locked in court with the former challenging the latter’s right to hold Durga puja on the NKDA-assigned ground.
“They do not have exclusive rights to the ground. So when we saw they had stacked bamboo poles on one side we planned our pandal at the other corner. Yet a couple of their members challenged us,” said Biman Samaddar, secretary of the Newtown CC Block Puja Samity.
The police were called in on January 22 but refused to intervene. “Our women members usually hold Saraswati puja but seeing the unpleasant situation this year they had to back out,” said Pradipnarayan Pal, secretary of the residents’ body.