Hanuman Jayanti celebrations in Bengal passed peacefully on Thursday unlike last week’s Ram Navami festivities, with police sources hailing Wednesday’s Calcutta High Court order that gave the force a free hand to decide the marchers’ numbers and routes and made the rally organisers responsible for any violence.

“The free hand given to the police by the high court has helped prevent any major incidents till evening. We hope the remaining few hours will pass peacefully too,” said a senior IPS officer, who was monitoring at least 35 Hanuman Jayanti events in three south Bengal districts.

Nabanna sources said that as soon as the high court had issued its guidelines, chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who was in Digha on Wednesday, instructed the civil and police administration to draw up a foolproof plan to prevent a repeat of the Ram Navami violence.

Following Mamata’s directive, chief secretary H.K. Dwivedi held a meeting with the district magistrates.

Dwivedi told the district magistrates that permission for the processions would be granted only if the organisers fulfilled all the conditions about routes, numbers, not carrying arms and the like. Director-general of police Manoj Malviya met senior police officers from across the state to discuss the security arrangements along the court-prescribed format.

A police source said the state had not witnessed any communal strife till evening, apart from “one or two reports” about some attempted violations at a Hooghly rally. In Bansberia, Hooghly, the police detained five youths for carrying arms in a Hanuman Jayanti rally. “The high court order making the rally organisers responsible for any violence made a great difference. The organisers didn’t take chances,” a source said.

As the police ran a campaign that the organisers would be held responsible for any violence, a sense of urgency to finish the rallies was seen among the organisers at several places, multiple sources confirmed separately to this newspaper. In West Midnapore, the police issued identity cards with photographs to each of the chief organisers of the rallies. “We had also kept a deputy magistrate on standby for each of the 12 Hanuman Jayanti rallies in our district as they can promulgate Section 144 CrPC (a ban on assemblies) at any time if they smell anything wrong,” a senior police officer in West Midnapore said.

“The court simply helped us,” a source said. “The number of participants in the rallies was restricted to 100. Details of at least 20 participants, with names, addresses, phone numbers and photocopies of their identity proof were collected. Permission was denied in sensitive areas. All this worked like magic.” It helped that the court had stated that the police were free to restrict the number of rally participants so that the marches carried a religious flavour rather than a political one.

A police source said this guideline enabled the force to stop political people like BJP leaders Locket Chatterjee and state unit chief Sukanta Majumdar from participating in rallies in Hooghly. Such steps could not be taken ahead of Ram Navami on March 30. The organisers did not furnish any details of the numbers of marchers; and some of the processions, with armed participants, were held without permission.

In Shibpur, Howrah, where communal strife broke out on March 30, neither of the two big rallies had the necessary police clearances. Besides, the involvement of senior BJP leaders in the Ram Navami celebrations helped fuel tension at some places. “Against the (BJP) narrative that the police were trying to prevent the rallies, it became difficult to manage the Ram Navami processions in some parts of the state,” a source said.

A senior official at Nabanna said it wouldn’t have been possible for the state administration to issue the police with such strict guidelines on managing the Ram Navami processions as the ones the high court later laid down for Hanuman Jayanti. “Had we done so, the BJP would have termed it another instance of the ‘appeasement of one particular community’,” the official said. Trinamul general secretary Kunal Ghosh said: “The BJP leaders in Bengal got hoist with their own petard. They had moved court (seeking central forces), and the court’s verdict stopped them from bringing countless outsiders to the religious rallies, or changing the routes or timings of the processions.” Majumdar, the state BJP president, did not hide his chagrin.

“The police issued several restrictions by using the order of Calcutta High Court,” Majumdar said.