Several big-ticket Durga Pujas that Mamata Banerjee used to inaugurate till last year are now thinking of inviting new chief minister Suvendu Adhikari to do the honours.

Mamata would famously hop pandals to inaugurate them one after the other, starting a day or two before Mahalaya and turning the exercise into a public outreach ahead of Bengal’s biggest festival.

The organisers of several such Pujas told The Telegraph they wanted Suvendu to replace Mamata from this year.

“It’s our wish to have chief minister Suvendu Adhikari among us to inaugurate our Puja. We have decided to send him an invitation closer to the festival,” said Jayanta Guchait, assistant treasurer of the Singhi Park Sarbojanin Durga Puja Committee.

“We are unsure what response we will get. But we want to invite the new chief minister.”

The organisers of the Hindustan Park Sarbojanin Durgotsav said their Puja was “non-political” and it didn’t matter who was in power.

“All these years, the chief minister had inaugurated our Puja. We want the tradition to continue,” said Sutapa Das, the organising committee secretary.

Kajal Sarkar of the Bosepukur Sitala Mandir in Kasba expressed a similar interest in having Suvendu over. “We will do the needful closer to Puja,” he said.

Sources at the state secretariat said Puja organisers used to send invitation letters to the chief minister’s office during Mamata’s tenure.

“Also, Madam would sometimes agree to a personal request made through a close acquaintance. She rarely turned down an invitation,” a senior official said.

Mamata was so keen on the pre-Puja routine that she would go virtual to inaugurate Pujas in the districts.

“She was extremely keen on visiting pandals and seeing the different types of idols. She wouldn’t reject almost any request to inaugurate a Puja,” an aide to the former chief minister said.

“She used to cover the pandals in the city personally. And the ones in the districts, she inaugurated virtually.”

Kolkata Police alone have around 3,000 Durga Pujas formally registered in their area. The number of Pujas organised informally is much higher. Across Bengal, the number is over 43,000, excluding the household Pujas and thevery small community Pujas that do not need formal clearance.

Most of the prominent Calcutta Pujas were known to be close to the erstwhile Trinamool leadership; many had influential ministers and leaders at their helm.

Many Pujas are now keen to distance themselves from Mamata’s party.

Debaprosad Bose of Barisha Club in Sakherbazar, Behala, said the club had approached the local MLA, the BJP’s Sankar Sikder, for a formal association with its Puja committee.

A former patron of the Puja, then Trinamool councillor Sudip Polley, was arrested a few weeks ago after the BJP government assumed charge.

The organisers of some of the Pujas that Mamata used to inaugurate said they had yet to decide whom to invite this year.

Swapan Mahapatra of Ekdalia Evergreen Club said long-term patron Subrata Mukherjee used to invite the then chief minister, Mamata. The Puja committee continued the tradition after Subrata’s death in 2021.

“We have yet to decide who is going to inaugurate the pandal this year,” Mahapatra said.