Calcutta, Dec. 24: Thanks to Madan Mitra, his 1,700 fellow inmates in Alipore jail will be celebrating Christmas and New Year with an 11-day "food fest" starting tomorrow.

Jail officials said they had never heard of such an event at any Bengal prison before. "The proposal came from the inmates and the authorities accepted it," an official said.

But he conceded that Mitra was the brain behind the move, which would land a range of delicacies from chow mein to Mughlai parathas on the inmates' lunch plates till January 4.

"The jail department gave the go-ahead after seeking the necessary clearances from Nabanna," a senior jail official said. State secretariat sources said the proposal was considered favourably as Mitra was the mover.

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee recently told a party meeting she did not believe Mitra was a beneficiary of the Saradha scam, a stand she has repeated before aides.

Mitra loyalists said this had lifted the morale of the former transport minister, who was arrested last December, spent most of his time in hospital till receiving bail on October 31, and was sent back to jail by the high court on November 19.

Although he is a diabetic with complications and is allowed home food, sources said Mitra would take part in the food fest in solidarity with fellow prisoners.

Lunch in the jail ordinarily means dal, vegetables and roti or rice, with non-vegetarian fare served once a week. Prisoners had gone on a hunger strike in May protesting the quality of the food.

During the festival, the lunch menu would include dishes such as chilli chicken, fried rice, momos, chicken pakoras and cakes, although breakfast and dinner would consist of the usual fare.

The prisoners will have to pay a token price for the food from their earnings in jail but a part of the money collected would be ploughed back into the prisoners' welfare fund.

A former IPS officer who had worked in the prison department said the initiative was in sync with the objective of turning the prisons into correctional homes.

Among the inmates are Saradha chief Sudipta Sen and Aftab Ansari, the man behind the 2002 attack on the American Center in Calcutta.