By IANS
Kolkata : The Indian Army has taken umbrage at the holding of the symbolic book fair at Kolkata Maidan from where it had been banished last year on environmental grounds.
“It is totally unauthorised and acceptable. No permission was taken from us for holding the symbolic fair on the Maidan,” defence spokesman Group Captain R.K Das said told IANS.
“We have sent a letter to the police and Booksellers and Publishers’ Guild, the organisers of the Kolkata Book Fair, not to hold the fair on the Maidan,” Das said.
“We have asked the organisers of the fair to cover the holes that they have dug upin the ground.”
However, the guild is officially not the organiser of the symbolic book fair, though many associated with it were seen at the fair’s inauguration Wednesday evening.
The Kolkata Book Fair this year stood cancelled with the court Monday ruling against the organisers’ decision to hold it in the Park Circus ground in central Kolkata, which is surrounded by schools, colleges, hospitals and residential quarters.
A division bench comprising Chief Justice S.S. Nijjar and Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghosh, after hearing petitions filed by residents challenging the legality of holding the fair, ruled against the guild.
The army, which is the custodian of the Maidan, the original venue of the fair, was not much in favour of handing over the city’s lungs to the guild and last year the army and greens heaved a sigh of relief when the Calcutta High Court ruled against the guild’s decision to hold the fair there.
With the fair this year cancelled at Park Circus ground, a symbolic fair was inaugurated by aggrieved intellectuals as city’s literary patriarch Sunil Gangopadhyay hammered a gong and kicked start the event at the Maidan Wednesday, without any permission of the army.
Meanwhile, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, an avid book lover, and Transport Minister Subhas Chakraborty are making last-ditch efforts in finding an alternative site for the book fair.
“We are still looking for a suitable place. No decision has been taken yet,” Chakraborty told reporters.
“Kolkata’s book fair is a pride of this city. The buzzword of pollution problem that is doing rounds in the air is a mere exaggeration of the actual fact. The pollution caused due to book fair is a temporary problem which can be solved taking adequate measures,” Gangopadhyay had said after inaugurating the symbolic fair.
A symbolic book fair function was also held in the city’s Town Hall Tuesday night in the presence of the chief minister to salvage a semblance of prestige before the foreign delegates.
The decision of the Calcutta High Court has given a body blow to the Publishers and Booksellers Guild. But the residents and academic institutions around Park Circus ground where the fair was planned were happy.