Worshippers want to perform Chhath Puja rituals at Rabindra Sarobar, a BJP leader said on Thursday evening, hours after the Supreme Court refused to allow Chhath Puja at the south Calcutta water body.
The rituals will be performed at dusk on Friday and dawn on Saturday.
Bir Bahadur Singh, the president of the BJP’s Rashbehari Mandal III, said: “People want to go to the Lake (Rabindra Sarobar) to perform rituals. Which place can accommodate so many people other than the Lake?... Let us see what decision the devotees take.”
“Rabindra Sarobar can accommodate lakhs of people.... The Supreme Court’s order has to be followed, but it is also true people want to perform rituals inside Rabindra Sarobar,” Singh added.
Community members said a lot of people would go to Rabindra Sarobar to perform the puja. They will turn back if police do not allow them to enter the compound.
Last year, the police looked the other way while worshippers broke locks on Sarobar gates and entered the compound to perform Chhath rituals. Community members said devotees would not hesitate to do the same if the police behaved the same way.
Randhir Singh, an official of the Rashtriya Bihari Samaj, felt many people would try to enter Rabindra Sarobar despite the ban. “If the government and police are lax in implementing the National Green Tribunal’s order (banning pujas, picnics and other social events in the Sarobar compound), some devotees would enter Rabindra Sarobar,” said Singh. Manoj Kumar Jha, a community member, echoed Singh.
“Last year, too, there was a ban on rituals inside Rabindra Sarobar, yet devotees broke locks and went inside. They gathered courage to do so because the police did not stop them and there was political support,” said Jha, the convenor of Bharat Kshatriya Samaj.
Singh and Jha both said devotees would not have the courage to violate the court’s order if the police guarded the gates of the Sarobar.
An official of the Calcutta Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA), the custodian of Rabindra Sarobar and Subhas Sarobar, said the two compounds would be closed to visitors from Thursday midnight till 3pm on Saturday.
Additional private security personnel have been deployed to guard the gates and the barricades put up where boundary walls are broken or are very low.
Discontent was simmering among many devotees over the ban on the rituals at the two lakes. Residents of the Kurigram slum near the Kadapara-EM Bypass crossing, where Subhas Sarobar is located, vented their ire in an interview with news channel ABP Ananda. Several women said they saw no logic in not allowing Chhath Puja at Subhas Sarobar.
The police fear that some vested interests could exploit this discontent to stoke violence on Friday or Saturday. “We will deploy an adequate number of personnel outside the two lakes. Some groups may try to incite trouble,” said an officer at Lalbazar.
Community members in central and north Calcutta said they would not face any trouble as they performed the rituals at ghats along the Hooghly. “We never went to Rabindra Sarobar as the Hooghly is closer home. But what will happen to those who performed the rituals there? A lot of sentiment is associated with performing rituals at that place,” said S. Kapoor, a businessman in Burrabazar.
There were some contrary voices, too. Randhir Singh of the Rashtriya Bihari Samaj said they had urged everyone to perform the rituals at home this year because of the Covid-19 pandemic. “We have put up banners urging everyone to do the rituals at home,” he said.
Santosh Jaiswal, a resident of the Wellington Square area in central Calcutta, said he welcomed the NGT and the Supreme Court’s orders. “We need to protect Rabindra Sarobar. We, as a family, perform the Chhath rituals at home nowadays,” said Jaiswal, a businessman.
