Flaws wait in silence until a tragedy strikes. And there were many at Kolkata's Chorbagan. At least 17 died in a stampede on a day that marked the formal initiation of Durga Pujo in the city. The blame can wait, many would say, as the focus remains on the recovery of dozens injured. Rightfully so, but Kolkata has waited a bit too long--so long that the tragedy couldn't wait any longer.
The City of Joy isn't a stranger to crowd control. Be it during Pujo or Christmas at Park Street, Eden Gardens cricket matches, or Derbies between Mohun Bagan and East Bengal. But during Pujo, the entire city is on alert. A week of celebrations, barricades, and thousands of personnel and volunteers on the streets. And years of event-free crowd control had convinced Kolkata it could handle the crowd. Until one fateful evening, it couldn't.
No Lessons Learnt?
October 18, 2015 was the fifth of the 10-day festivities. Even though the formal pujo usually begins two days later, popular pandals open their gates much earlier to an eager crowd. In Deshapriya Park in South Kolkata, a massive 88-foot-high Durga idol was erected in 2015. Promotional campaigns billed it as the world's tallest idol that year.
The frenzy hit and massive queues started forming outside the park that hosted the pandal. Being Sunday, the weekend rush added to it, and a stampede-like situation erupted as an overwhelming crowd tried to catch a glimpse of the idol.
There was overcrowding. Chaos. Suffocation. Some fell inside the pandal. At least 11 hoppers were injured in the incident. Exactly 11 years later, a rerun of sorts was witnessed in the northern part of the city.
Life In Narrow Lanes
North Kolkata is an intricate web of narrow lanes and lines of houses sharing wells. Unlike in the southern part, where constructions are relatively new and more planned, a typical northern neighbourhood has houses built over a hundred years ago.
Soaked in nostalgia, these lanes are home to memories of the freedom movement and political turbulence. And just overhead are webs of tangled electrical wires posing a fire hazard. Four-to-five-foot-wide lanes barely allow a bike and passersby to cross. But during Pujo, inconveniences are easily ignored. These lanes are decked up with lights and other installations. Lines are marked and announcements are made from speakers.
Crowd inside a pandal in Kolkata on October 14, 2026
Photo Credit: ANI
Massive queues pile up during this time of the year to get a glimpse of the idol. Every year. Not once, but for a week. Yet except the 2015 episode, no major stampede situation was witnessed here. Over the years, the city had convinced itself that it championed the art of crowd control.
How Kolkata Manages Pujo Crowd
Crowd controlling during Pujo is a resource-intensive job. Multiple layers go into it. At the neighbourhood-level, young volunteers with community badges help the crowd pass smoothly, ensuring no pileups at any one point. As the puja scale go big, civic volunteers are deployed by the police. Some deploy private security. In popular areas, police posts are erected. Personnel are stationed.
The traffic police, along with volunteers, help manage barricades to allow the crowd cross road or enter a puja pandal.
Besides, CCTVs and drones are used to monitor the crowd surge at rush points.
A popular and viral pandal like Chorbagan, where the tragedy occurred yesterday, was expected to ensure the above arrangement in coordination with the police. But that wasn't the case, eyewitness accounts suggest. Many claim the police deployment was not adequate. Some say the volunteers weren't there. A video from two days earlier captured a heavy rush of the pandal hoppers crossing a rope barrier.
Kolkata Police personnel walk through a corridor inside a Durga Puja pandal after an exit gate collapsed, causing a stampede
Photo Credit: PTI
Instagram is flooded with visuals of surging crowd from other areas as well.
Such is the artistic mastery that the narrow lanes are romanticised for the profound excellence that it needs to turn a lack of space into creative brainstorming. The massive risks of stampede or fire are easily ignored.
Regulations are there but are easily flouted. Police permissions are a formality for organisers with decades of experience in managing community events.
A Tragedy That Waited To Happen
Eyewitnesses flagged several such lapses in their testimonies after the Chorbagan tragedy. The entry and exit of the pandal were narrow, and there was no light, according to a man whose daughter and granddaughter were caught in the stampede and were injured.
It took him and his family about an hour and a half to wade through a sea of pandal hoppers to the entrance. "There was no light, no police, no volunteers. There was nothing," the man alleged.
It rained and people jostled to get a quick entry. Those inside waited for the showers to relent, and the crowd surged in the pandal. There were more people inside than it was built to stand. And there was chaos.
Footwear and other items lie scattered after a stampede at the Chorbagan Sarbojanin Durga Puja pandal in Kolkata
Photo Credit: ANI
Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari said an announcement by the organisers led to the tragedy. It isn't clear what the announcement was about, but the videos showed speakers blaring that the pandal had collapsed and people were urged not to head towards it. The fact-finding team will inquire into what led to the stampede and no one will be spared, Adhikari has assured.
So...the...Wait
Cramped lanes, inadequate arrangements, and rampant violations aren't new in North Kolkata. So much so that the people here are so used to it that they have given up complaining. Recognised by UNESCO, this heritage festival demanded that the community shareholders ignore the inconvenience.
The people waited. Until one day, the local expertise in handling Pujo crowd failed. 17 people died. And if 2015 wasn't an eye-opener to the authorities, Chorbagan is expected to bring in a more regulated process of crowd management that could avert such tragedies.
(Chandrajit Mitra is News Editor at NDTV)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author