Kolkata: On the eve of the Ram Navami celebrations in Bengal, the police beefed up security measures across the state as a large number of religious rallies are expected to be on the streets since the morning of Sunday, it was learnt. A senior police official said not less than 60 rallies are likely to be taken out in Kolkata and over 3,500 police personnel will be on duty under the supervision of officials in the rank of deputy commissioner and joint commissioner of police ranks to keep vigil along the rally routes. There will be drone surveillance and CCTV monitoring to keep a tab on the rallies with quick response team vehicles posted at strategic points such as Entally, Cossipore, Khidderpore, and Chitpore in various parts of the city.
There will be live streaming of the rallies which will be monitored at Kolkata Police headquarters in Lalbazar, while over 20 IPS officers will be in charge of different divisions of Kolkata. In the district, senior IPS officials will be monitoring the situation in parts of Howrah, Hooghly, North 24-Parganas, Asansol in East and West Burdwan, Malda, Murshidabad, Jalpaiguri and Siliguri to ensure the festival is held peacefully. The police personnel will be on duty till April 7.
Commissioner of Kolkata Police M K Verma on Saturday visited parts of north and central Kolkata, particularly some cosmopolitan belts, accompanied by deputy commissioner ranked officials to take stock of the security arrangements. In Jalpaiguri, TMC councillors have reportedly distributed leaflets door-to-door to invite residents to participate in Ram Navami processions. The police officer said that last year, around 60 rallies were conducted in Kolkata during Ram Navami — and the figure is expected to be the same this year. TMC spokesperson Joyprakash Majumdar accused the BJP of trying to incite people in the name of religion and playing the polarisation card after its repeated failure to dislodge the Mamata Banerjee government through democratic means.