Muhammad Ali Park Durga Puja is drawing visitors in central Kolkata despite being forced to hold its celebrations on a roadside for the seventh consecutive year because the committee has not been able to use the park’s main space.
The 58th edition of the puja organised by the Muhammad Ali Park Youth Association is being held in a smaller format this year, without the large thematic installations associated with the festival in earlier years. The venue remains accessible from Mahatma Gandhi Road Metro station, about a minute’s walk away, and organisers say visitor numbers continue to be strong.
The committee’s president, Bimalkumar Jhunjhunwala, said the puja was earlier held inside the larger park but that the association had not received access to it for seven years. The limited space has forced the organisers to build the mandap along the roadside, restricting the scale of the installation and the room available for visitors.
Despite the reduction in scale, the puja continues to attract people from across Kolkata. Sougata Das, a recent college graduate who travelled from Birati with friends to visit pandals around Sealdah, said the Muhammad Ali Park puja remained important because of its connection with childhood memories. He said the reduced grandeur had not ended the habit of visiting the idol each year.
The organisers have attributed the continuing difficulty over the puja venue to a dispute that developed under the previous government. They are now hoping that the change in government will help resolve the issue. According to Jhunjhunwala, the new administration has given an assurance that the association could return to a larger venue from 2027.
The association is also linked to state minister Tapas Roy, who was appointed its chairman in June after the change in government. Roy attended the inauguration of this year’s mandap. Jhunjhunwala said the minister had assured the committee that efforts would be made to settle the venue issue within the coming year.
The organisers said the administration had allotted slightly more space for this year’s puja than in recent editions. That additional area has allowed the committee to present the festival in a somewhat improved form, although it remains smaller than the puja’s earlier versions. Jhunjhunwala said the organisers could not mount a large celebration without access to a larger park and had to work within the space made available to them.
The venue dispute highlights the importance of public-space access for large community festivals in dense parts of Kolkata. A change in the location of a puja affects not only the scale of the mandap but also pedestrian movement, crowd management and the way visitors reach and circulate around the site. In this case, the organisers’ next stated milestone is to secure a larger venue for the 2027 edition.
The Muhammad Ali Park Youth Association will continue holding the puja at its present roadside location this year. The committee expects the government’s efforts to resolve the venue issue to determine whether the festival can return to a larger space from 2027.
