Durga Puja organisers wasted no time and started to demarcate the 10-metre boundary outside pandals beyond which Calcutta High Court has allowed visitors.

Some painted a boundary and some have put up barricades after leaving 10m around the periphery of the pandal’s external structure.

Some big puja pandals — like Singhi Park in Dover Lane and the neighbouring Hindustan Club — have been built in a way to ensure drive-through viewing where people need not step out for a dekko.

“Our pratima (idol) is anyway visible from the road. We are calculating the distance of 10 metre starting from the pratima (idol), because if we start calculating from outside the pandal, people on the other side of the barricade will have to stand in the middle of the main road,” said Bithi Basu, the general secretary of the Hindustan Club puja committee.

Singhi Park puja committee members said they would wait for government orders before deciding if anything needed to be done to their structure.

Several puja committees, however, complained against the last-minute directive.

“Initially, there was confusion on the point from where we have to calculate the distance of 10 metre. But now things are clear. It would have been easier for us had the instructions come a little earlier,” said Sandip Chakraborty, of Badamtala Asharh Sangha.

Members of the Mudiali puja committee said they had made all necessary arrangements keeping in mind the government directives till now. “Now we are holding discussions on one particular point. If only a few fixed number of people are allowed inside the pandal on the Puja days, the others won’t get any chance at all. But they, too, are an integral part of the festivity,” a member said.

The court conceded: “It is possible that the aforesaid measure may not be able to control the spread of the pandemic if people come out to the streets in big numbers.”

But the division bench of Justices Sanjib Banerjee and Arijit Banerjee, which issued the order on pandals on Monday, wanted to discourage people from stepping out altogether.

“If the pandals are made no-entry zones and a certain distance from all sides of the pandals is covered as a part of the no-entry zone, the public at large will be aware that there will not be any access within the pandals or even close to the same and the affinity to take to the streets may be less. It will also be possible in such a scenario for the virtual coverage of the pandals, as has been appropriately suggested in the guidelines by the State, and for ordinary citizens to make do with virtual darshan this year and wait for the normal fare to return the next year,” the order said.

Mudiali, like many other pujas, is banking on its live streaming set-up to reach out to people who would not be able to enter the pandal.

Many big puja organisers said the dhakis and the priest and his help would mandatorily have to be allowed inside the pandal. “This means, out of the 25-30 people whose entry will be permissible, six to seven will be dhakis and priests. That will result in even fewer club members and residents of the neighbourhoods entering the pandal,” said a puja committee member in south Calcutta.

The secretary of Bosepukur Sitalamandir puja committee, Kajol Sarkar, said: “It is surprising to see the new directive on Tritiya while we have entered the fifth phase of unlock. For a big puja like Bosepukur Sitalamandir, the pandal’s visibility will not be a problem even from a distance of 30ft. But the smaller ones inside lanes and bylanes will face difficulty in complying with the court order,” Sarkar said.

In its order, the high court said that though the state and the police had mentioned elaborate plans on crowd management and sanitisation, there was lack of clarity in implementation. “Notwithstanding the exemplary guidelines issued both by the State and by Kolkata Police, it does not appear that there is any blue-print which has been prepared for the implementation of the relevant measures,” the order said.

According to the state’s figures, the Calcutta police district alone has 3,000 pujas. Around 34,000 pujas across Bengal have got a Rs 50,000 dole from the government this year.