Bengal government has decided to wait till Wednesday before sending out necessary instructions to district authorities as well as civic officials and puja organisers on how to implement the Calcutta High Court order of making pandals no-entry zones.

“The government has already issued required instructions on issues related to handling of Covid-19 during the festive season. But we have to wait till Wednesday before asking the authorities to implement the high court order. This is because a review petition was filed in the high court and it is likely to come up for hearing on Wednesday,” said a senior government official.

According to sources, the government has to take a series of measures to implement the high court order.

First, it has to ensure that all puja pandals are barricaded following the guidelines laid out by the high court.

“It is a Herculean task. The state has about 37,000 community or Sarbojonin pujas. Barricading all the pandals is easier said than done,” said a source.

Second, the pandals have to be divided into two groups — small and big ones — before putting up barricades. This is also an arduous task as officers need to assess the pujas by visiting the sites and they may face resistance from the organisers, sources said.

“If the order stays, the government has to work on war footing to convert the pandals into no-entry zones and police might have to put up barricades at majority of the pandals as some organisers have already refused to cooperate,” said an official.

The sources said given the grievances among the puja organisers, the state government had no option but to wait for the judgement on the review petition.

“It might be tough for us to implement the order at the last moment.... But we have to wait for the order on the review petition as putting up barricades around the pandals right at this moment may invite law-and-order problems,” said another bureaucrat.

While the government would wait for the hearing of the review petition, it has already announced plans to introduce more than 2,000 beds at dedicated Covid hospitals within a month as part of preparations to tackle more cases after the festival period.

Of the extra beds, 535 beds are ICU beds and remaining 1,639 would be general beds, said a source, adding 37 per cent of the existing 12,751 Covid beds were occupied as of Monday.

“We are not in the midst of a crisis given that the bed occupancy ratio is still below 50 per cent. But we can’t be complacent as the spread of the novel coronavirus is still not under control. That is why we are laying stress on upgrading our infrastructure,” said a senior government official.