Kolkata: CPM netas said on Friday that their Durga Puja bookstalls are not branded as ‘Sharadotsab’ stalls but as ‘Pragatishil Pustak Bikray Kendra’ or ‘Marxiya Sahitya Pustak Bipani’. Some only carry a ‘Sharadotsab er Suvechha’ (Sharadotsab wishes) greeting, they said, responding to the chief minister’s appeal to puja committees not to allow stalls that use the term ‘Sharadotsab“ instead of “Durga Puja”.The party will neither bar anyone displaying ‘Sharadotsab er Suvechha’ message in the stalls, nor issue any directive to write ‘Sharadotsab’ in all the stalls, party’s Calcutta district committee secretary Kallol Majumdar told TOI. “We do not want to accord so much importance to Suvendu Adhikari’s words,” he said.The stalls sell books on a variety of subjects including politics, history, literature, human rights, science, environment and books for children. “We do not sell any religious book. We have been setting up such stalls for several decades. Some of them are very small like the ones in Metiabruz and Garden Reach, while some are big stalls,” said Majumdar.Some of the bigger stalls are set up near Jadavpur 8B bus bus stand, near College Square and near the entrance of Bagbazar Sarbojonin Durga Puja.In 2025, the party set up 108 bookstalls in Kolkata and sold books worth Rs 44 lakh on the four days of puja. “The stalls will be set up like previous years’. Let us see what the Durga Puja committees do. Some of them may be afraid because of the way the govt is issuing threats,” said Majumdar.CPM neta Sujan Chakraborty said even Rabindranath Tagore used the phrase ‘Sharadotsab’. The annual radio Mahalaya programme begins with the word “Ashwin er Sharadoprate”, he said. “The real issue is that the govt is afraid of books. All fascists are afraid of books,” said Chakraborty.
