When Higher Secondary 2009 ended on Thursday afternoon, Trinamul Congress youth leader Jhantu Dey looked more excited than examinee Jayanta Basak (name changed).

“Now we can launch a real poll campaign with loudspeakers. Mike chhara ki election kora jai? (Can there be an election without loudspeakers?),” Dey, who wrote his HS exams in 1998, asked Metro.

The general secretary of Trinamul’s youth wing in ward number 71 seemed to mirror the feelings of workers across the political spectrum who have been straining at the leash for weeks, eager to unleash the decibel devil on the city. Campaign teams armed with loudspeakers hit the streets within an hour of the school bells tolling to signal the end of the last HS paper.

Mamata Banerjee took the lead in breaking the sound barrier during a 14-km roadshow from Gariahat to Garia. “This is the first day we have been able to reach out to you this election; so it’s special,” she screamed into a mike.

Another Mamata procession has been lined up for Saturday. “We need to mobilise people for that,” said Dey, as a Maruti 800 with loudspeakers on the roof began a tour of Hazra in the afternoon.

Around the same time, loudspeakers were being tied to posts for a street-corner meeting 100 metres away in support of Rabin Deb of the CPM. The previous party meeting in the area was in an auditorium.

“That meeting did not draw the kind of response or get the mileage than an open-air meeting generates,” said a CPM worker in between overseeing arrangements for the street-corner rendezvous.

Not just party workers, everyone from the sound-equipment supplier to the auto operator is happy that the exams are over.

Equipment suppliers charge Rs 250 a day for a horn unit (a loudspeaker and a microphone), an amplifier and a battery. Autorickshaws earn Rs 50 for every hour they spend on the campaign trail.

“We will be starting our auto campaign from 5.30pm on Friday. We intend covering all 51 Calcutta Municipal Corporation wards under Calcutta South constituency on autos fitted with loudspeakers over the next week and a half,” a CPM leader said.

That is music to the ears of those like Nilu Dutta. “We lost out on a lot of money because of the HS exams. In any other election year, suppliers would have started raking in the money by now,” said Dutta, who has been contracted to supply electrical equipment, including 20 loudspeakers, microphones and lights, for a Rabin Deb rally.

“I charge Rs 100 a loudspeaker. I will now be earning of Rs 2,500 in one evening, and my equipment is completely booked for a week,” he added.

But where does the citizen dive for decibel cover? “It is not exactly a free-for-all. Certain rules are meant to be followed,” said Biswajit Mukherjee, the member secretary of the noise pollution monitoring committee.

Parties are required to take permission from the civil authorities before using loudspeakers. There is also a time limit — 6am to 10pm — and no loudspeakers can be used within 100 metres of hospitals and schools/colleges when classes are on. The highest permissible sound level is 65 decibels, meant to be controlled with a “limiter” gadget.

The maximum penal action for a violation is a fine of Rs 1 lakh or five years in jail. Complaints can be registered with the pollution control board and local police stations.

The Election Commission has a lesser role to play in keeping the decibel down. “The commission’s rulebook states that a microphone cannot be used to campaign between 10pm and 6am. But if it is used within the stipulated hours but the decibel level is high, the onus is on the pollution control board and the administration to take action,” chief electoral officer Debashis Sen said.

Most rally organisers are unaware, or allegedly pretend not to know, about the rules. “Sometime ago a party was caught using 65 loudspeakers at a meeting in Kalyani. One of the organisers claimed that he thought the 65-decibel limit meant 65 mikes were allowed,” said an official of the pollution control board.