Makeshift chulhas that were dug in the Maidan for cooking meals during Sunday’s DYFI rally. Picture by Aranya Sen

Makeshift chulhas, stretches of burnt grass, chicken feathers, broken egg shells, leftover food, plastic and paper packets flying about… That was the Maidan on Monday afternoon, 24 hours after a rally by the DYFI, the CPM’s youth wing.

This, despite party workers and hired professionals working to clear the mess ever since the rally ended.

“There will be a joint inspection with the army on Tuesday. Hence, we have been trying to clean up the greens. We got a contractor to employ 40 ragpickers on Sunday and 60 on Monday for the task. In addition, 125 party workers have been on the job since early morning,” said Prabhakar Mondal, who has been marshalling the clean-up operation for the party.

State committee member of the DYFI Abdul Rauf claimed that five truckloads of waste had been carted away from the greens with help from the conservancy department of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation.

But why were chulhas set up and so much food cooked for a rally that lasted hardly two hours in the afternoon?

According to the party workers, many of the participants came from afar and, hence, needed to cook.

Regulars on the Maidan, such as Nageshwar, who sells nimbupani, and chaiwala Brajanath, however, stated that a sizeable section of the participants chose to have an impromptu picnic instead of listening to the chief minister’s take on industrialisation. The chulhas and heaps of wasted food are testimony to that.

“It is a fact that unlike on previous occasions, the garbage has been partially cleared after Sunday’s rally,” said environment activist Subhas Dutta. “However, only cosmetic cleaning cannot undo the damage. Digging up and burning of the greens has a far-reaching impact,” added Dutta, who submitted a petition in court in 2003 on granting of licences to rallies and other events on the Maidan.

Dutta will show photographs depicting the state of the greens in the high court on Wednesday during the hearing of a petition on the venue of the Book Fair. “The high court chief justice said on Friday that he is concerned about the Maidan,” stated the activist. The chief justice had also observed that the Maidan is “littered” after rallies.