Close to 800 stalls will come up at the 46th edition of the International Kolkata Book Fair in Central Park in Salt Lake.
This is around 200 stalls more compared to last year’s fair, officials of the Booksellers and Publishers Guild said on Monday during an inspection of the venue.
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee is scheduled to inaugurate the fair on January 30.
Spain is the focal theme country of the fair, which will continue till February 12 and will be streamed online.
“The number of publishers has gone up and in trying to accommodate them we will have to increase the number of stalls this year,” said Sudhangshu Sekhar Dey, the Guild’s president. “We have decided to reduce the size of several stalls from 100 square feet to 50 to accommodate more.”
Senior officials of the Guild, who scanned the venue with a team of police officers led by Gaurav Sharma, the commissioner of Bidhannagar police commissionerate, said last time, 570 book stalls and 240 little magazine stalls were set up.
“About 22 lakh people visited the book fair last year and books worth Rs 23 crore were sold. Usually, around 20 countries participate in the book fair. But this time we expect the number to go up,” said Tridib Chatterjee, the Guild’s general secretary.
During a coordination meeting with different agencies, Guild officials requested the Metro Railway representatives to run the service between Sealdah and Sector V on Sundays when it remains suspended. Sundays attract the biggest crowd at the fair, officials argued while making the request.
A dedicated fleet of state buses will run to connect different destinations across the city to the fair venue, officials said.
Four dead in quarry
Police late on Sunday recovered the bodies of a family of four from a 300-footdeep abandoned stone quarry in Asansol of West Burdwan.
On Monday, the deceased were identified as Bijoy Rauth,45, his wife Namita, 35, their 10-year-old son Krishna and three-year-old daughter Lodo.
Police said their primary investigation suggest that it was a case of suicide following a financial problem in the family.
Police said Bijoy, a contract worker at West Bengal State Electricity Distribution Company Limited had plunged into mental depression following some financial problems.
