Preparations underway for the puja
An organiser of New Town Sanatani Durga Puja said the puja was held in 2022 and 2023.
He blamed “harassment by the Trinamool-led govt” for their inability to organise the puja in 2024 and 2025. Kolkata: A Durga Puja in New Town, which had been discontinued for the past two years, is making a comeback this year — with the chief minister’s advisor as its chairman and a monk, who is also the govt’s road renaming committee head, as its chief mentor.
We will take the traditional route,” Kartik Maharaj said. Nowadays, I often see ‘purohits’, who cannot even chant the mantras,” he said. When TOI reached out to Gupta, an IIT Kharagpur alumnus and a retired IAS officer, he said it was “premature for me to respond”. Barun Biswas, one of the organisers of New Town Sanatani Durga Puja, said their pandal will have two tunnels — one a tunnel of Sanatani and another the tunnel of science.
Large banners announcing the puja and with pictures of the CM’s adviser Subrata Gupta, a monk of Bharat Sevashram Sangha, Kartik Maharaj, and actor-Lok Sabha MP George Baker have been put up across New Town. Baker is the president of the puja. “Durga Puja had transformed into Durgotsab and then to Sharodotsab. Most pujas concentrated on the theme and the actual rituals of the puja took a backseat. At New Town Sanatani Durga Puja, we will concentrate on the rituals. “I have asked the organisers to engage a good ‘purohit’, one who knows the mantras.
“The previous govt us as Suvendu Adhikari (then then Leader of the Opposition) used to inaugurate our puja,” said Biswas.