Hyderabad Durga Puja celebrations will bring an estimated 15,000 devotees to NTR Stadium each day this year, as the Hyderabad Bangalee Samity prepares a five-day festival featuring a recreated Bengal zamindar’s mansion, traditional rituals and cultural performances.
The Samity, which is organising its 85th celebration, will host the event at the stadium opposite Indira Park. Organisers said permissions for traffic management, law and order arrangements and electricity supply had been secured for the festival.
The central mandap will follow the traditional ‘Ek Chala’ format, with Goddess Durga shown alongside Lakshmi, Saraswati, Kartikeya and Ganesh. The idol will be decorated with shola jewellery handcrafted by women artisans from rural West Bengal and will carry ten gold-plated weapons, according to the organisers.
The idols are being made using Ganga clay, husk, bamboo and natural colours. They will be dressed in Banarasi saris and Jamdani textiles from Krishnanagar. The shola ornaments are being prepared by women from the Malakar community, whose traditional craft uses shola, a wetland plant.
The Samity said it continues to use shola jewellery to preserve the custom despite the material’s decline. The ten weapons to be carried by Durga represent those used to defeat Mahishasura, according to the festival organisers.
Three pavilions are planned at the stadium. One will house the idol, another will be used for annadanam and bhog distribution, and the third will host cultural programmes. Artists from Mumbai, Kolkata and Hyderabad are scheduled to perform during the celebrations.
The religious observances will run from Maha Shashti to Maha Dasami and include Sandhi Puja, homam and pushpanjali. The celebrations will conclude with Dashami Alai Balai, during which devotees exchange jammi leaves as a gesture of goodwill.
Biswajit Mukherjee, vice-chairman of the HBS Durgotsav Committee, said the festival offered an opportunity for people to participate in community celebrations away from the virtual world. He described it as a moment for mental clarity, spiritual purification and inner strength.
The organisers expect visitors from across the Telugu states, as well as Maharashtra and Karnataka. The scale of the gathering places the stadium’s public-event infrastructure, access arrangements and essential services at the centre of the festival’s operations, with traffic, security and electricity coordination planned alongside the religious programme.
