New Town’s Smritiban Park was in the eye of a storm last weekend, with a puja committee trying to set up its pandal there and morning walkers putting up a concerted fight till it got pushed out.
It all started on September 12 when ladies walking past the park at about 10am noticed bamboo poles stacked outside the park, pandal work on inside, and branches being sawed off a tree next to the gate. “We are morning walkers here and love the greenery of this park. When we realised the Rudra Palash tree was being felled to make space for the pandal, we were appalled. We protested and informed our fellow walkers,” said Archana Chowdhury of BC Block, as Ruma Roy and Rina Maiti nodded in unison.
Smritiban is situated in BB Block. It has a lake that is surrounded by trees, shrubs, and grass along with walkways, and was initially meant for delegates coming to Calcutta to be escorted there to plant a sapling before pushing off to the airport. One can enter the park free of charge from 6am to 10am and 4pm to 7pm. The gate remains shut at other times.
No entry for pandal
The walkers complained to the authorities about the incident and called a meeting at the park the next morning. “Seventy-eight walkers signed a petition to stop the puja in the park,” said one of them, Partha Sarathi Biswas of BC Block. “We informed the police, forest officials, NKDA and Hidco.”
Santu Majumder, a walker from BA Block, said they had been coming to the park since 2012. “We walk, exercise, and even hold cultural activities like Rabindrajayanti and Poila Baisakh here. But we do it in the open without erecting any stage. We cannot allow trees to be cut at any cost.”
Sukanta Pal, also of BA Block, belongs to a green lovers group called Ecologic. “We have over 500 members and have planted over 4,000 trees across the township. We love and look after the plants in Smritiban too. We will do all we can to protect them,” he said.
Following complaints, forest officials intervened, and the pandal had to be pulled down the same day.
Counter charge
The pandel now being created in the dead-end.
The puja committee that was trying to erect the pandal is New Town BB Block Residents Welfare Society. This group had held its first Durga puja on a footpath last year. “We cannot hold the puja on vacant plots as NKDA does not share names of the owners for us to request them for permission. We have applied to NKDA and HIDCO multiple times for a designated plot to hold our puja, like in other blocks, but are waiting over a year and a half for their response,” says secretary of the society, Kalyan Basu.
He reasons that since many pujas are held in parks, they may hold theirs in the only park in their block – Smritiban. “The park is located centrally in the block, so it would have been convenient for all to access. We applied and received permission for the puja from the forest department, a copy of which was marked to NKDA. We received permission from the police, fire, and electricity departments too,” says Basu.
The secretary says their pandal would have come up inside the park, next to the gate, at the loss of no greenery. “Not a single shrub, let alone tree, would have required to be cut,” he insists. The branches being chopped on September 12, alongside their pandal work, he says, was of trees getting trimmed. “We were witness to two or three trees getting pruned by the park’s staff that day, but this had nothing to do with the pandal.”
The security guard at Smritiban is careful not to take sides in the tussle. “I saw bamboo sticks stacked outside the park a day before the agitation, and we had been informed beforehand by the forest department that pre-puja trimming of trees would be done. On September 12, branches were indeed getting chopped, but I don’t know if it was related to any puja,” said the guard, asking not to be named.
The Telegraph Salt Lake reached out to several forest department officials but none were available for comment.
New location for puja
Basu claims that within an hour of the confrontation with the morning walkers on Friday, they had to dismantle their pandal. “Forest officials arrived at the site in an hour and requested us so,” he says. They are now holding their puja at a dead-end street next to Smritiban.
“Our puja comprises 40 to 50 families of mostly aged residents, who could not tolerate more harassment, so we relocated. It’s sad how these walkers, many of whom are puja organisers in their own blocks, misrepresented the situation,” says Basu.
An older puja in the area is Action Area 1B Sorbojanin, that is being held since 2010, pooling in residents from BA to BF blocks. It began in an empty BB Block plot but is now held at Sonar Kella Park in BA Block, some 200m away from Smritiban. Some blocks have now broken away from this puja and started their own. In BB Block, despite some residents opting for the new Residents Welfare Society puja, some continue their allegiance to the 1B puja. “This agitation may have been caused by residents who hold their puja outside BB Block, but with subscription from BB Block residents,” Basu says, about the 1B puja.
Either way, morning walkers are relieved. “There is no way a pandal could have been erected in Smritiban without felling trees, and a puja would have attracted crowds who would trample shrubs, create a racket, and drive away birds. It would have set a precedent for more events throughout the year, disturbing the peaceful ambience that we walkers treasure. We are not against pujas, but please, spare our park!” says Samir Bhattacharjee, a walker from BF Block.
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