NEW DELHI: The Kumbh mela and the Gangasagar mela, both ancient Hindu religious fairs, have become subjects of political wrangling between the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
While West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has claimed that the Gangasagar mela is the larger of the two gatherings, BJP’s Amit Malviya has retorted, saying Banerjee’s claims about attendance at the Gangasagar mela are greatly exaggerated.
“While the Maha Kumbh mela is making headlines globally, drawing millions to Prayagraj for the Amrit Snan, the Gangasagar mela remains overlooked. The arrangements for pilgrims are inadequate, exposing the Bengal administration’s apathy and lack of planning.
Last year, Mamata Banerjee claimed that 1.10 crore devotees attended the Gangasagar mela. However, an RTI response revealed that only 3% of this number actually visited,” Amit Malviya, chief of the IT Cell of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and co-incharge of the party’s West Bengal unit, wrote on X.
Malviya’s comments were in response to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s demand for “national status” for the Gangasagar mela, held on Sagar Island, located at the confluence of the Hooghly river and the Bay of Bengal, in West Bengal’s South 24 Parganas district.
“We have been trying to get the national fair status for the Gangasagar mela in vain for the last 10 years,” Banerjee said during an address from the Outram Ghat transit point on the bank of the Ganga (Hooghly) River in Kolkata.
“This is no less than the Kumbh mela, but is bigger than that,” she said, adding that announcements are being made at the fair site in various languages for pilgrims coming from across the country. Banerjee said that unlike the Kumbh mela, which is accessible by road, air, and train, it is difficult to go to Sagar Island, situated around 130 km from Kolkata, since pilgrims have to cross a river by ferry to reach there.
“If you see from the angle of difficulty in transit, the Gangasagar mela is much tougher than the Kumbh Mela,” she said. The CM said her government has been urging the central government for the last 10 years to construct a bridge over the Muriganga river so that the fair site can be connected directly by road from Kolkata, but nothing has been done yet.
“So we have decided to construct the bridge on our own and have already allotted Rs 1,500 crore for the project,” she said.
Malviya, on the other hand, claimed that with proper development, the Gangasagar fair could generate over Rs 1,000 crore in revenue, to start with, transforming the economy of the region, which currently struggles with poverty.
“Realisation of this vision, however, would require a change in governance. When Mamata Banerjee is voted out and a Sanatani government takes office in West Bengal, the Gangasagar mela can be reclaimed as a cornerstone of Hindu spiritual revival, aligning with the state’s rich history of religious movements and cultural resurgence,” Malviya wrote on X.