OPINION | Bengal's Puja Politics: BJP Once Targeted TMC's Patronage, Now It Faces The Same Test

The BJP, which spent years accusing the Trinamool Congress of using puja committees for political patronage, is now facing allegations of attempts to influence or take over committees across the city.

Durga Puja is still weeks away, but Kolkata’s political battle over the festival has already begun.

Source : PTI

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Key points generated by AI, verified by newsroom

• BJP actively seeks control of influential Durga Puja committees.
• Disputes, court cases, even a death mark festival control.
• Puja committee control is crucial for upcoming civic polls.
• Parties use committees for local power and narrative influence.

Durga Puja is less than forty-five days away, and Bengal is already preparing. Workshops are busy, bamboo structures are rising, and Puja committees are holding the meetings that rarely make headlines. It is Bengal’s biggest festival, but it is also a vast local economy. Idol makers, dhakis, electricians, caterers, decorators, printers and small traders depend upon these few days.

Yet beneath devotion lies a political truth that every Bengali para understands instinctively. Durga Puja is also about control. Who calls the meeting? Who signs the cheque? Who speaks to the police? Who controls the club room? In Kolkata and across Bengal, the festival has always been local politics wearing festive clothes.

After May 4, when the BJP formed the government under Suvendu Adhikari, the battle over who controls Durga Puja has become sharper. The controversies surrounding Puja committees are not simply isolated quarrels. They raise a larger question: how quickly can a new ruling party establish itself inside Bengal’s most important neighbourhood institutions? Political patronage around Durga Puja is hardly new. Congress cultivated barowari committees as extensions of urban influence. The Left Front built deeper networks through clubs, libraries, sporting associations and neighbourhood organisations. A Puja did not need a hammer-and-sickle banner to reflect the political weather of the locality.

When the Trinamool Congress replaced the Left, it inherited that architecture and made it more personal. Councillors, MLAs and ministers became patrons. The person who could arrange a water tanker or secure last-minute police permission was often the same person associated with the ruling party. The BJP spent years accusing the Trinamool of politicising Bengal’s Puja ecosystem. The uncomfortable question now is whether, after coming to power, it is beginning to inherit the very system it once condemned. State BJP president Samik Bhattacharya has attempted to draw a line. He has said the party should not formally control Durga Pujas and that elected representatives may join committees only when invited. He himself has refused to become president of any Puja committee.

The position is clear. The ground, however, is messier.

Confusion and Fear of Puja Organisers

With competing political signals and changing expectations, Durga Puja committees across Kolkata are struggling to understand whom they should follow.

There is a deep sense of confusion among Puja organisers across Kolkata. They are unsure whose instructions to follow: the government’s or the VHP’s. Is the government supporting the VHP, or is the VHP acting independently? Who will control the clubs, who will work for them, and which TMC leaders are under political pressure? The emergence of camps such as the one led by Ritobrata Banerjee, which reportedly includes several TMC leaders associated with Durga Puja committees, has added to the uncertainty. For many organisers, it is simply unclear what the government and the ruling party actually want.

An organiser from one of North Kolkata’s oldest Durga Puja committees, speaking on condition of anonymity, told me: “There is just over a month left, and we cannot remain confused. But we do not know whom to follow. We want the Puja to happen the way it has always happened. We never allowed non-vegetarian shops near the pandal. This time, we are planning separate sections for vegetarian and non-vegetarian food. But the bigger problem is who will run the club. That is not an issue that can be solved overnight. We are fed up and anxious.”

The organisers of Kolkata’s famous theme-based Pujas are under even greater pressure. With several BJP leaders and ministers echoing the VHP’s position that the appearance and attire of Ma Durga should be orthodox rather than experimental, some committees are reconsidering their plans.

An office-bearer of one of Kolkata’s biggest Puja committees, which was earlier associated with a heavyweight TMC cabinet minister, said: “We cannot change the face or appearance of Ma Durga at this stage. We have requested the authorities to consider our theme this year. From next year, we will completely stop experimenting with the attire of the Durga idol. We have apologised and written to the concerned authorities as well.”

The confusion has also reached smaller community Pujas in housing complexes. An organiser from New Town told me: “This time, we have asked food stalls serving non-vegetarian items to operate outside the campus and have sought the necessary permission. We have also clearly informed residents that no one will be allowed to bring non-vegetarian food near the pandal. We do not want any controversy, nor do we want to hurt anyone’s sentiments.”

For Kolkata’s Puja organisers, the countdown to Durga Puja has begun. But alongside preparations, there is now something else in the air: uncertainty over what can be done, what cannot, and ultimately, who gets to decide.

The Battle for Puja Committees

What is unfolding across Bengal cannot be dismissed as a series of unrelated disputes. At Suruchi Sangha in New Alipore, one of Kolkata’s most prominent Pujas, a reconstituted committee appointed BJP MLA Sourav Sikdar as secretary following the political decline of its previous Trinamool leadership. Residents protested, arguing that the new committee had been imposed and demanding that the Puja remain independent of party control.

The change of leadership was complete. The consent of the para, however, remained contested. At Deshapriya Park, the Ballygunge Sarbojanin Durgotsab Samity became embroiled in a dispute between rival groups. Allegations of vandalism, questions over the legitimacy of the existing committee and competing claims over construction brought work to a halt.

Bagbazar Sarbojanin, one of Kolkata’s oldest barowari Pujas, saw its committee election end in a 33-33 deadlock, with allegations of intimidation and court intervention adding to the uncertainty. Elsewhere, the conflict turned more direct. In Entally, rival BJP groups clashed over the formation of a Puja committee. In Baruipur, BJP worker Bapi Pramanik died following a clash linked to the formation of a Puja committee. No single controversy proves a centrally directed plan. Together, however, they reveal something more fundamental.

A Puja committee is not merely a five-day cultural organisation. It possesses a bank account, a volunteer network, relationships with the police and municipal authorities and, crucially, a claim over public space. The BJP criticised this ecosystem when it was outside power. Four months after coming to office, it increasingly finds itself inside the same rooms.

The KMC Election Factor

The urgency also has an electoral explanation. The Kolkata Municipal Corporation election is expected after the festive season, following a process of delimitation that could expand the number of wards from 144 to 209. For the BJP, this makes Durga Puja politically invaluable.

For years, the local Puja patron was often a Trinamool councillor, a councillor’s relative or a club secretary aligned with the ruling establishment. That individual did more than inaugurate a pandal. He settled neighbourhood disputes, cultivated local contacts and built a network of volunteers. When election season arrived, the candidate was not a stranger distributing leaflets. He was the person associated with last year’s Puja. The BJP’s Assembly victory was large, but winning an Assembly election and controlling a Kolkata ward are two entirely different political exercises. Waves can deliver governments. Booth committees, club networks and neighbourhood influence win civic elections.

The BJP does not possess the Left’s old organisational depth in Kolkata’s neighbourhoods, nor does it yet control the extensive club networks built by the Trinamool over the years. This is why Puja committees matter. Gain influence over a committee before Durga Puja and a party acquires something more valuable than a banner. It gains a network of volunteers, local legitimacy and a claim to represent the para. Leave those committees in the hands of political rivals and a newly elected representative may remain a visitor in his own neighbourhood. Puja and the KMC election, therefore, are not two separate political stories. They are part of the same battle.

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Area Dominance

Bengal’s politics has never been merely a contest of manifestos. It has always been a contest for control over local society. The club, the sports association, the Puja committee and the neighbourhood festival are not simply cultural institutions. They are places where political influence is accumulated and exercised. The Left understood this. Its strength did not depend upon placing party flags everywhere. It built influence through institutions embedded in everyday life.

The Trinamool captured many of those networks and made political patronage more visible. The councillor became the patron, organiser and problem-solver. The BJP is now attempting something similar, but in a far more compressed period. Area dominance through Puja works in several ways. The committee becomes the social face of the neighbourhood. The donation drive creates a map of households. Volunteers become a ready network for future political mobilisation. The spectacle itself generates legitimacy.

And the organisation does not disappear after Dashami. The club survives. The networks remain. The people who controlled the Puja continue to influence the neighbourhood. That is why controlling Durga Puja can become a shortcut to controlling an area. A party can win an Assembly seat and still lose the para if the club secretary and Puja committee belong to someone else. The Left understood influence without necessarily displaying ownership. The Trinamool increasingly understood ownership as influence.

The BJP, only four months into government and facing crucial civic elections, appears to be reaching for ownership because it lacks decades of organisational roots in many urban neighbourhoods. But there is also a risk. What begins as the liberation of a club from Trinamool dominance can soon appear as the arrival of a new set of political strongmen. The protests at Suruchi Sangha reflected precisely that anxiety. Residents did not necessarily reject a change of leadership. They questioned whether a public Puja was being converted into another party office with an idol inside it.

The Battle for Narrative

There is another prize beyond electoral geography. Durga Puja is Bengal’s largest Hindu public festival, and the BJP’s politics is openly shaped by Hindutva. The first autumn under a BJP government provides an opportunity to redefine the festival through a more explicitly Sanatani framework.

The debate over food, iconography and religious authority is part of that larger project. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s interventions around maintaining Sanatani traditions, restricting experimentation with the goddess’s appearance and questioning non-vegetarian food near pandals triggered an immediate backlash. Bengal’s Durga Puja has never followed a single cultural register. Theme Pujas have transformed the festival into public art. Fish and meat coexist with bhog and arati. The goddess has been repeatedly reimagined. A more standardised religious definition asks a different question: what constitutes an authentic Durga Puja, and who has the authority to decide?

That is where cultural control becomes political control. If a political ecosystem can influence not only who runs the committee but also how the festival should look, what food is appropriate and who can claim ownership over its traditions, it gains something larger than electoral influence. It gains the power to define cultural legitimacy. The Trinamool government made Durga Puja increasingly intertwined with the state through grants, inaugurations and official patronage. The BJP appears to be constructing its own relationship with the festival through religious language and the larger symbolism of Hindu identity.

The question, ultimately, is not whether politics will enter Durga Puja. Politics has always been there. Congress had its influence. The Left had its clubs. The Trinamool had its grants and councillors. The real question is why the BJP is in such a hurry in its fourth month in office, precisely when the pandal, the ward and the narrative of Hindu Bengal converge. The answer is neither theological nor romantic. In Bengal, the party that controls a Puja does not merely organise a festival. It gains access to a crowd, a committee, a network and a neighbourhood. And after May 4, that ownership has become one of the most fiercely contested political properties in Bengal.

Sayantan Ghosh, a columnist and Doctoral Research Scholar in Media & Politics, is a contributing author for ABP Live English.

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