Traders’ main refrain after the completion of Pous Mela on Friday may have been the overwhelmingly low footfall and sales owing to widespread panic over the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.
However, CPM, RSP and the SFI said books related to the CAA and the NRC had been sold out like hot cakes from their stalls at the four-day annual fair in Santiniketan.
“Other items may have seen a slowdown because of the low footfalls, but books on the CAA and the National Register of Citizens sold out rapidly in the first two days,” said an organiser for the local CPM outfit.
Last week, Trinamul, CPM, RSP and the BJP had said they would use their Pous Mela stalls to highlight their respective stand on the Act. Trinamul and the BJP had even set up giant screens at the fair grounds to telecast speeches by Mamata Banerjee and Narendra Modi regarding the issue .
Regardless of the low footfall, the highly anticipated CAA issue did not go ignored.
“We had around 250 CAA-related books at our stall, all of which sold out within two days,” said a CPM worker from Bolpur. The books were priced at Rs 15 and Rs 25. People came asking specifically for CAA/NRC literature. We did not expect to sell everything within two days,” said Manab Roy, area committee secretary of the CPM in Bolpur (West). It is nothing but a reflection of the CAA/NRC panic,” Roy added.
CPM leaders also said this year’s revenue — which they happened to earn chiefly from CAA-related book sales — was among their highest recorded. They added that literature sales at the CPM stall had reached Rs 68,000 against Rs 40,000 last year.
“In the past years, very few people used to visit our stalls. But this year, thousands of people came asking for NRC books,” a senior CPM leader said.
“After those were sold out, people even bought current-affairs books on Kashmir and a book written by our former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee,” he added.
CPM sources said all NRC and CAA-related books were also sold out from the student wing (SFI) stall.
“We sold over 50 copies of books on the NRC and the CAA,” said Somnath Sow, an SFI leader from Visva-Bharati.
Sources said 150 copies of a book titled CAB, NRC and NPR—Nirshorte baatil korte hobe (We demand scrap of CAB, NRC and NPR) were sold from the stall put up by the RSP.
“All the books relating to the NRC at our stall were sold within three days,” said Tapan Hore, central committee member of the RSP.
BJP leaders said they had also sold 200 books advocating the implementation of the NRC. “We kept a book on why we are demanding the NRC at our stalls. Over 200 people bought the copies,” said Bikash Mishra, BJP’s Bolpur town president.
