Calcutta, Feb. 2: The Publishers and Booksellers Guild came under attack from its own members today for ignoring the likely consequences of planning the Book Fair on Park Circus Maidan and not looking for an alternative venue.

The members walked out of a “special meeting” demanding the guild executive committee’s resignation for failing to organise the 33rd Calcutta Book Fair.

They sought an explanation from the committee for deciding to hold the fair at Park Circus. With no happy explanation at hand and the committee refusing to record the queries in the meeting minutes, the members left in a huff.

“The meeting was a farce,” said Sabitendranath Roy, a former president and one of the 35 members of the guild’s general body.

“The committee began explaining why the fair couldn’t be held — something we all knew. When members started asking why Park Circus was chosen and sought details of last year’s expenses, the committee refused to answer. We were told we were special invitees at the meeting and our views would not be recorded. So we walked out,” Roy added.

The committee also asked its members not to go public with “household matters”.

A day before the fair was to be opened, Calcutta High Court asked the guild to move out of Park Circus Maidan and return it to its original shape. A PIL had been filed citing the pollution and the traffic chaos that the fair could cause.

For several members, to- day’s meeting — the first since the fair was called off — served to expose the state of affairs in the guild that has been organising the Calcutta Book Fair for the past few decades.

Boi Mela 2008 — an alternative to the scrapped Calcutta Book Fair — will be held at Salt Lake Stadium from March 1 to 11. Subhas Chakraborty’s youth and sports department will be the anchor of the show to be conducted by five different bodies representing publishers and book sellers, and not the guild alone.

“The guild will send its members to the steering committee that will oversee Boi Mela 2008. But we want to ensure that these members are not a part of the coterie that has been at the helm of affairs for the past few years,” a senior member of the guild said.

As the guild struggled to keep its house in order, other publishers’ bodies worked overtime to ensure that the Salt Lake fair was a “state affair”.

“We want Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to chair the steer- ing committee. If he refuses, we want Chakraborty,” said Purnendu Dhar of the Paschimbanga Prakashak Sabha.

Pranab meets Basu

Foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee called on Jyoti Basu in his house this evening.

“It was a courtesy call... nothing to do with politics,” Mukherjee said. “I enquired about Basu’s health as he had not been keeping well.”