oppn parties A Salute To Kolkata Police And Their Team of Volunteers

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  • In Assam, a controversy erupted after a picture of UPPL leader Benjamin Basumatary, lying on a stack of Rs 500 notes circulated on social media. UPPL is an ally of the BJP
  • AAP's Jalandhar-West MP Sushil Kumar Rinku joins the BJP. He was the only AAP Lok Sabha MP
  • Supreme Court dismisses Centre's plea to review its 2023 verdict in the PMLA case
  • Close save for passengers as they remain unhurt after the wings of two planes graze at Kolkata airport. Pilots derostered and inquiry ordered by DGCA
  • Bengal BJP leader Dilip Ghosh gets notice from the EC as well as the BJP for making ugly remarks about Mamata Banerjee's parentage
  • Sadanand Vasanth Date, who faught terrorists in the 26/11 attack and was awarded the Preisent's Police medal, has been appointed the head of the NIA
  • Centre will borrow Rs 7.5L cr in the first six months of FY25, nearly 50% of the target for the full year
  • 25 stocks, including SBI, will see same day trade settlements from today in the world's fastest settlement mode in both BSE and NSE
  • Stocks recover smartly on Wednesday: Sensex rises 526 points to 72996 and Nifty 118 points to 22123
  • Tennis: Rohan Bopanna-Matthew Ebden reached the semifinals of the Miami Open
  • IPL: records tumble as SRH beat MI in a high-scoring match. SRH score 277/3 with 18 sixes and Mumbai score 246 with 20 sixes to fall short by 31 runs. Atotal of 38 sixes, highest in an IPL match were hit and both teams combined to score 523 runs, the highest aggregate in an IPL match
  • Amul will launch fresh milk in the US
  • IPL: RCB beat Punjab by 4 wickets as Kohli and Karthik shine with the bat
  • India strongly objected to German foreign office remarks over the arrest of delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, called it "biased assumptions"
Delhi Lt Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena says government cannot be run from jail, hints at President's Rule in the capital ////// In a dangerous incident, the wings of two planes grazed while taxiing on the runway at Kolkata airport, all passengers were safe but DGCA ordered an inquiry and the pilots were derostered
oppn parties
A Salute To Kolkata Police And Their Team of Volunteers

By Linus Garg
First publised on 2018-10-24 00:12:54

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Linus tackles things head-on. He takes sides in his analysis and it fits excellently with our editorial policy. No 'maybe's' and 'allegedly' for him, only things in black and white.
Kolkata Police need to be congratulated for the way they manage the sea of people and an endless stream of vehicles during the almost 10-day long Durga Puja celebrations in the city. The throng of people and stream of vehicles has to be seen to be believed. It starts from morning each day from the first day of Navratri and continues till the early morning of Dusserah (called Doshomi, or Bijoya, in Bengal).

Every year, the police, along with an army of volunteers and NGOs, have been fine-tuning the arrangements. It has been helped in a large measure by the proactive chief minister Mamata Banerjee. The action starts each year with a meeting with the large community puja organizers when crowd management and safety measures are discussed in detail. Then, the police top brass visit all the sites, or pandals, as they are called in the state, to get a first-hand idea whether the organizers have put in place all that was discussed.

As the day approaches, the police get all footpaths and part of roads barricaded for pandal-hoppers so that they do not spill onto the roads and block traffic. Some roads are either made one-way or blocked for vehicles. This year, the arrangements were top notch. The police are helped no doubt by the people’s desire to have an early view of the pandals and the idols. Hence, what used to be a five-day affair from Panchami to Navami has now extended to ten days. This means that the crowd is spread over those days and the rush, and crush, witnessed in the past is now not as great.

Still, it is a measure of its efficiency that the Kolkata police manages to give the citizens a peaceful and incident-free Puja every year. The police top brass is on the streets every day from the evening till the early mornings the next day. The volunteers work tirelessly to ensure that traffic moves without a hitch and pandal-hoppers do not face problems. Of course, some people who live near the site of big puja pandals are inconvenienced due to restrictions (one such resident once told me that he felt he had been put under house arrest), but they bear it sportingly. The joy of the festivities is enhanced by the efforts of the police and the volunteers.

pic courtesy: aitcofficial.org