The pandal is a replica of Dubai’s iconic skyscraper Burj Khalifa which has been built in Sribhumi, Lake Town.
The move comes on a day when the number of fresh Covid positive cases in Kolkata crossed 200 for the first time in nearly four months.
Doctors blamed irresponsible crowding at the puja pandals as the primary reason behind the rising Covid-19 numbers in the city.
The decision was taken on Wednesday hours after several senior bureaucrats and IPS officers visited the pandal, including state chief secretary HK Dwivedi and ADG CID Gyanwant Singh and Bidhannagar police commissioner Supratim Sarkar, on Wednesday night. By midnight, the police sealed all the roads leading to the pandal and dispersed the people waiting for hours on the service lane of VIP Road to drive the pandal away.
“Nothing is more important than human life. Hence, after a coordination meeting with club officials, it has been decided to restrict the entry of visitors to the pandal for the next few days of worship. They will have access to the pandal premises on production of relevant ID proofs,” said Bidhannagar CP Supratim Sarkar.
By the morning of Nabami, large iron and aluminum structures had been erected at the entrances and a large team of officers had been deployed to block the entry of visitors. Loudhallers were brought out as police were asking visitors not to crowd around the area and put up no entry banners at all entryways.
“We must have done something extraordinary that has attracted so many people to this puja. But with such a congregation comes the risk of an accident. So, after a meeting with the police, we decided to stop the entry of outsiders in the pandal premises. However, we will screen the puja online live, which may be accessible to audiences from 116 countries other than India,” said Sujit Bose, chief patron of the puja committee.
The puja at VIP Road has been on the receiving end of controversy since its inception, when airline pilots complained about the laser lights in their cockpits when they were on their way to land at the Kolkata airport, which led to a spectacular laser light show at the pandal. forced to suspend. But more than that, the throngs of people who blocked the VIP road, service lane and all the lanes leading to the pandal were causing concern to the locals and the rest of the city.
Traffic on VIP Road went at snail’s pace on all puja evenings and no matter what the police tried – from operating both types of traffic on the Kolkata-bound flank to making the Lake Town subway one-way to travel to Sreebhumi Khel Interested people have to travel one kilometer. To take the next metro at Golaghata. On Wednesday, police switched off the lights on a section of the road leading to the pandal to discourage light-goers, but nothing helped as the crowd of revelers continued to build, which eventually led to police blocking the entry of visitors. Called to suspend.
The 145-feet tall pandal was built using about 6,000-acrylic sheets to make a replica of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa. More than 250 workers worked hard for three and a half months to erect the structure.
The decision to block the entry of outsiders has brought relief to the locals, many of whom stepped out of their homes for the first time on Thursday. “Since last week there was so much crowd outside our houses, we were afraid to even open our windows, forget to hit the road and run the risk of infection. Now that the entry of visitors has been banned, we can come out of our homes and even visit the pandal at Nabami for the first time,” said an elderly local resident.
In 2015, a similar situation had forced the police to shut down the Deshapriya Park puja pandal in south Kolkata. The idol of Goddess Durga on that occasion stood at 88 feet and was known as the “largest” in the world, which drew a large crowd from far and wide to create a stampede-like situation in the puja premises. Was suffocated. Traffic on Rash Behari Avenue for three days after which the police sealed the gates and installed view cutters around the park to block the entry of visitors.
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