Durga Puja will be celebrated at 33,851 mandaps across Bangladesh this year, around 1,500 more than last year, Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed said on Wednesday, 30 September, as he set out the government's security arrangements for the festival.
The minister announced the plan after a coordination meeting at the Home Ministry in Dhaka, attended by senior law enforcement officials and representatives of puja organising bodies.
Under the plan, monitoring cells will run around the clock at Police Headquarters and at divisional and district police offices throughout the festival. A mobile application developed by the National Telecommunication Monitoring Center will allow any incident to be reported quickly. Volunteers at each mandap will be verified and given official identity cards.
According to intelligence agencies, no mandap has so far been identified as high-risk. Organisers have also been told to keep electricity flowing without interruption, with generators on standby and rechargeable lights as backup.
He added that, on the Prime Minister's instruction, the government grant for puja mandaps has been raised to Tk 5 crore from Tk 4 crore this year.
Photo: Pratyya Ghosh / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
Sources: en.bd-pratidin.com
