Chief minister Mamata Banerjee heralded the festival season on Tuesday inaugurating the “sharadotsav” (autumn festival) at Sreebhumi Sporting Club in Lake Town.

She explained that her ribbon snipping marked not the beginning of the Puja but the Utsav (festivities).

“I have come to the pandal. But on this day I don’t inaugurate the Puja. This is the utsav. The Devipaksha begins from Mahalaya and I will start inaugurating puja pandals after that,” Mamata said.

Wednesday is Mahalaya, which marks the end of Pitrpaksha and ushers in Devipaksha.

“People wait for Durga Puja throughout the year. Durga Puja in Bengal marks the start of the festive season. After that, there will be Diwali, Kali Puja, and Chhath. This festival season continues till Christmas in December,” Mamata said.

One of the landmark pujas in Calcutta is also notorious for triggering endless snarls along VIP Road that leads to the airport.

Not for the first time, Mamata had a word of caution for Sreebhumi’s chief organiser, Sujit Bose, also the state’s minister for fire and emergency services.

“Lakhs of people visit this puja. Traffic should not be hit. This road leads to the airport and many are required to reach there in an emergency. There was preparedness last year and I would request the same this year as well. It’s our duty to ensure no one misses a flight,” Mamata said.

Over the past few years, traffic management and crowd control on VIP Road during Durga Puja has become a nightmare for the police with millions of people converging on the Sreebhumi premises.

“The formal inauguration of our Durga Puja will take place on Wednesday,” Bose said.

The organisers said they had discussions with officers of the Bidhannagar commissionerate to ensure traffic along VIP Road was not hit. Volunteers in different shifts would be deployed to help the police manage the traffic, they added.

In 2021, Sreebhumi’s pandal, modelled on Burj Khalifa, had brought traffic to a halt on both flanks of VIP Road, the city’s busiest link to the airport. On Ashtami, the pandal had to be shut to visitors because of the crowd surge.

This year the pandal of Sreebhumi Sporting Club is modelled on the lines of the Venkataswara temple in Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, organisers said.

The main gate is a replica of the temple’s facade. Motifs of the presiding deity, Balaji, have been used in the decor, the organisers said.