The Navaratri Festival held in the Salt Lake Stadium Campus from 20th September to 6th October, 2000 made a mockery of sound pollution control norms. Organised by Bidhan Nagar Bikash Mancha, a newly formed body, it used microphones indiscriminately and throughout night of as many as nine days. Repeated appeals to the organisers, the local police station and the Pollution Control Board yeilded no results. By disturbing the peace of the locality, the festival became a nuisance, to say the least. The Mancha did the same last year also for five days.

A section of the local people including this correspondent first appealed to the stadium

authority and the chief executive officer immediately issued an instruction (299/YBK/2000) to the Mancha to follow ‘Sound Pollution Norms’. As this instruction was not followed, the local people informed the Salt Lake (South) Police Station and the Board on October 4. Interesting the OC of the Police Station first pleaded helplessness but later asked the Mancha over the phone to control their microphones. Mr. Biswajit Mukherjee, Law Officer of the Pollution Control Board, also issued a similar instruction. But the microphones continued to blare till the morning of 7 October and thus threw all norms to the winds.

How could they dare to defy all appeals and instructions? The answer is not hard to find. One member of the Mancha allegedly claimed that they had received the patronage of both the CPI(M) and the Congress.

Home