Kolkata has seen road-grabbing complaints being levelled at Durga, Kali and Ganesh Puja pandals in the past. Hanuman Puja is the latest on the list.
The Telegraph visited a Hanuman Puja venue in Tollygunge’s Bansdroni on the city’s southern fringes on Thursday where the organisers erected a pandal that appears to test the court’s norms.
Calcutta High Court on Wednesday permitted a person to organise Hanuman Puja at the location without causing “any inconvenience to the public at large” and complying “with the noise pollution norms”.
The pandal erected under the banner of Sri Ramdoot Sangha does not appear to comply with at least one key norm related to puja pandals that had been mentioned in an order issued by the high court in 2009.
The pandal, which has come up on a thoroughfare, is attached to the wall of a building on one side — which does not tally with one of the conditions mentioned in the order passed by Justice Sanjib Banerjee.
The 2009 order upheld a report submitted by the state that had mentioned “uniform rules” for all puja committees for constructing pandals.
The court order said: “The report (by the state) speaks of uniform rules which have been put in place and that the State proposes to implement the rules without exception. These rules include a direction that there must be a 4 feet clear open space on all sides from the property line of any building, boundary wall or any other permanent structure.”
The order further said: “In the event the private respondents act in derogation of such directions, not only would the police authorities be entitled to demolish such part of the structure which is in violation of the directions, the police authorities may take further steps to demolish the pandal itself or the larger parts thereof as they may deem it fit.”
Asked about the four-foot-on-all-sides norm, an organiser of the Hanuman Puja said they had to erect the pandal at that spot because they had not got space on a nearby ground used by a neighbourhood club.
“We had approached a local club for the ground where we could organise the puja but were told that a fair would be held on the same dates. You can see there is no fair and the ground is absolutely empty. Yet we were not allowed to organise Hanuman Puja there,” said Jagat Kishore Bhagat, vice-president of the puja committee and secretary of the BJP’s Tollygunge Mandal-III.
Jeet Bose, president of the BJP’s Tollygunge Mandal-III, said they had informed the high court about all details of the pandal and the width of the road on which the structure has come up.
“We had submitted that the pandal would cover only half of the 15ft-wide road. A part of the road has been left free for traffic,” Bose said.
According to the West Bengal Pollution Control Board norms, loudspeakers fitted with sound limiters are allowed to be played between 6am and 10pm and the sound cannot cross 65 decibel. Asked whether sound limiters were attached to the sound boxes installed in the pandal, Bose said he would not be able to answer that as he was busy with puja rituals.
An organiser of the puja who was in the pandal said as BJP members from the adjoining Ward 114 had organised a Ram Navami procession, they wanted to organise a programme in Ward 112. “So we decided to organise Hanuman Jayanti in our ward,” he said.
