Pous Mela this year will be held at Visva-Bharati’s Purba Pally fairground after a gap of three years.

This is the first time the state government will organise the fair with the help of Visva-Bharati and Santiniketan Trust. The Trust, with full support of Visva-Bharati, used to organise the fair till 2019.

This year, the five-day fair will begin on December 24 (the seventh day of Pous, according to the Bengali calendar).

The decision was made at a two-hour meeting among the state government and varsity officials, old-timers of Santiniketan and traders’ organisations on Tuesday evening at the conference room of the subdivisional officer of Bolpur.

“We are glad to announce that the Pous Mela this year will be organised at the traditional fairground in Visva-Bharati. We will organise the fair with the cooperation of the university authorities who have the expertise in holding the event for years. We want to include at least a member from the varsity in each of the 10 committees (in organising the fair),” said Bidhan Ray, the Birbhum district magistrate.

Despite the interim vice-chancellor Sanjoy Kumar Mallik taking the primary initiative to organise the fair this year, the varsity last week announced it could not organise the event, citing multiple constraints.

Then, the process of organising this year's fair resumed after the state government decided to hold the event and sought the varsity’s Pous Mela ground for the event.

Visva-Bharati on Monday night gave its nod to provide the fairground after the district administration agreed to its conditions including issues related to environment, security, safety and cleanliness.

Eight senior Visva-Bharati officials took part in the meeting where they urged the administration to maintain the tradition of the fair that bears the legacy of Rabindranath Tagore and his family. Tagore’s father Maharshi Debendranath started this fair in 1894 to promote rural art and craft from Santiniketan among the urban populace.

“The administration sought cooperation from Visva-Bharati in ensuring the cultural aspects of the fair were ket intact. There is no question of not helping them,” said Nilanjan Bandyopadhyay, special officer of Rabindra Bhavana, who participated in Tuesday’s meeting.

Several varsity officials and veterans of Santiniketan said that if the fair this year was a success, it would create a new model of organising the fair supervised by the state government with Visva-Bharati's help.

“Visva-Bharati is an educational institution and it was a Herculean task for the varsity to organise a fair. As the state government came forward to organise the event, it got rid of a lot of responsibilities. If the effort is successful, it will be the start of a new model,” said a senior varsity official.

“I hope Pous Mela this year will be different as the both state government and Visva-Bharati have agreed to organise the event jointly. However, we will have to wait till everything is over peacefully and smoothly,” said Supriya Tagore, a descendant of the Tagore family.