With the six-day Pous Mela coming to an end on Saturday night, Visva-Bharati, with the help of the police, is gearing up to execute the arduous task of winding up the fair within 48 hours.

In a directive passed in 2017, the National Green Tribunal had instructed that the famed Pous Mela should wrap up within 48 hours of the official end of the fair. The NGT also ordered that the fairground should be cleaned up as soon as possible and returned to its previous stage.

On Saturday afternoon, senior varsity officials, headed by acting vice-chancellor Binoy Kumar Saren, held a meeting with senior police officers and district officials to draw up a road map to execute the challenging task of fulfilling the NGT directive.

“The entry of visitors to the Pous Mela ground will be prohibited from Saturday midnight onwards. We will close all entries except two gates, which will be used to shift decorators’ materials and items from the stalls,” said Saren.

On Sunday morning, a team of varsity officials and police officers will conduct a campaign requesting traders to dismantle the stalls set up on the fairground.

The decision was endorsed in the presence of the local MLA and the state’s correctional home minister, Chandranath Sinha, and sabhadhipati of Birbhum Zilla Parishad, Sheikh Kajal.

An illuminated Ferris wheel at the Poush Mela in Santiniketan on Saturday.

Environmentalist Subhas Dutta in 2017 had sought the intervention of the NGT by highlighting the issue of pollution at Pous Mela. Before the NGT’s intervention, the fair was officially organised for four days with one additional day added to the official schedule. However, a large number of traders would continue with their business, occupying the Pous Mela ground for at least 14 more days, leading to more pollution and filth. The NGT directive sought to put an end to it.

Santiniketan Trust, the official organiser of the fair with full support from Visva-Bharati organised the annual event for the last time in 2019. Since then, varsity authorities, led by the then VC Bidyut Chakrabarty, decided to step back from organising the fair, citing the lack of infrastructure.

A source said the main reason for the varsity’s distancing from the fair from 2020 to 2023 was the administration’s failure in 2019 to vacate the fairgrounds on time.

As Visva-Bharati developed a bitter relationship with the state government during Chakrabarty’s tenure, authorities faced unprecedented pressure to vacate the land. Multiple police cases were filed against the then VC and his officials when they used force to vacate the ground.

“However, times have changed. It is no longer Bidyut Chakrabarty’s tenure, and the current administration has built a good rapport with the state government. So, we will have police support to implement the NGT directive,” said a senior varsity official.

Although the varsity officials are confident about winding up the fair and returning it to its previous state within 48 hours, the spontaneous crowd arriving at the fairground late on Saturday evening suggested that the task would not be easy.

“Most of the hotels and resorts in Santiniketan are fully booked. Thousands of people from nearby areas and districts are arriving spontaneously. If the trend continues on Sunday morning, it will be nearly impossible for the police to control the huge crowd,” said an official.

A senior police official said till Friday at least seven lakh people visited the Pous Mela this time.

A senior varsity official said that previous experience showed that traders kept the fair going beyond the official period.

Since many traders know that a large number of people visit the fair after its official end, they use all possible tactics to stay on the grounds, he said.

This year, Pous Mela had 1,600 official stalls. A source revealed that, in addition to the official stalls, there are thousands of traders selling food, clothes, toys and craft items on the fairground.

“These traders are poor and make good profits during Pous Mela. So, they do everything possible to continue their business,” said the source.

Datta, who monitored compliance with the tribunal’s order, said: “The fair was conducted decently this year. However, we will oversee whether the mela organisers and the administration can wind up the fair within 48 hours of its official completion.”

When asked what steps he would take if the organisers failed to comply with the NGT directive, Datta said he would take stock of the situation by visiting the fairground first.

Many Santiniketan residents and varsity officials said that the fair was well organised this time and the performance of the police was praiseworthy, particularly in traffic management and crime prevention.

“We ensured robust vigilance during the six days of the fair. We detained over 500 suspected individuals and filed specific cases against around 250 people involved in crimes at the fairground,” said Rana Mukherjee, the additional superintendent of police in Bolpur.