PLEASE TALK TO US AT 8 P.M EVERY SATURDAY, AT DD-BANGLA.

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I wish every citizen a Shubho Bijoya and a happy Dussera. I also congratulate each of my colleagues for this real feat — making the puja a great success by maintaining peace, keeping ever-watchful eyes on the crowd, round-the-clock anti-sabotage checking, unrelenting intelligence-gathering and by not letting the city go out-of-gear. All these without playing a spoilsport, it is only easier said than done. I call Durga Puja our annual exam.

Our men and women turned out to be true unsung heroes during the puja by taking ailing patients to hospitals negotiating the over-crowded roads of the city, by administering first-aid to injured, by helping elderly people to cross busy roads safely, by making roads safe for girls by keeping the road-Romeos at bay, by escorting ambulances so that they didn’ t get stuck midway during the peak hour rush.

Durga Puja, which is truly secular in spirit, is the city’ s vibrant living tradition. I am still amazed how the city that struggles each day for its very survival suddenly transforms into the world’ s largest open-air emporia of art and craftsmanship. So it is always a big challenge for us to keep the tradition alive and unspoilt, without running any security and safety risk.

In fact, Durga Puja involves arguably one of the biggest arrangements in the world in terms of keeping watch on subscription collection (which often tends to border on extortion), coordination and repeated intervention with public utility agencies, inspection of roads, interaction with puja committees, putting up barricades, erecting watch towers, massive and random checks at guest houses and hotels, rounding up of criminals before the puja and meticulously implementing them during the puja with plan ‘ B’ ready, in case, plan ‘ A’ fails.

Meticulous implementation of a plan was tougher than making a plan. Particularly, in managing crowd which swelled into a few lakhs at any given point of time after the evening, similarly managing the mammoth vehicular traffic. But diligence of my officers and personnel made the tough job look easy. Our job which began long before the puja would continue till Dadasi, the last day of immersion. Supervision of immersion ghats, river patrolling and deployment of divers of our disaster management group equipped with modern masks and other equipments are also part of our puja.

I am also happy the way most of the puja committees complied with the High Court Order for greater safety. In fact, there is growing awareness among puja organizers in complying with the Court orders and guidelines of the law-enforcing agencies. We also took a tough stance by declaring that non-compliance of the orders would make us duty-bound to demolish such part of the structure which is in violation of the directions. We clearly didn’ t want to be spoilsports. But safety of lakhs of visitors was our utmost priority. No way, we could compromise on that.

We, a force of 26,000 police personnel, were in our efforts to make sure your festivity most safe and joyous. But I must acknowledge the equally relentless citizens who acted as our ears and eyes almost everywhere. They informed us if they found anything suspicious. They kept us posted on every development in every locality. We got to know about abandoned suitcase or abandoned car in lightning speed. With citizenry as our extension, Kolkata Police became truly all pervasive.

Policing is a 24X7 job. It was more so during the festivity that almost sapped our energy. But we regained it immediately after receiving a note thanking us for our job well done. We are, in fact, more than happy to serve you better, to be with you, as always.

Wish all of you, once more, a Shubho Bijoya and a happy Dussera.

Yours truly,

Gautam Mohan Chakrabarti