West Bengal bars liquor on Maha Ashtami and DJs at Durga Puja

West Bengal's government has rewritten the Durga Puja rulebook for 2026. Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari set the terms on 7 September at a coordination meeting with puja committees at Milan Mela, near Science City in Kolkata.

Liquor shops and bars across the state will stay closed on Maha Ashtami. Adhikari said that on the day devotees offer anjali to Durga, no alcohol will be sold in shops and none will be served in bars. The ban is for one day, not for the whole festival. Ashtami is still the peak drinking session in many neighbourhoods. Organisers and retailers will have to plan around a dry Tuesday in October rather than a long dry spell.

Sound, roads and the missing carnival

DJ music is banned during the festival and during immersion processions. The government wants pandals to keep a religious tone and to cut the late-night fights that follow loud processions on narrow lanes. Theme pandals are still allowed. Committees have been told that idols, structures and themes must not insult religious feeling or undercut what Adhikari called Sanatan tradition. The original meaning of the festival, he said, should be visible in the work.

National highways cannot be closed for a puja. In Kolkata, a list of major roads is also off limits. Reports named 13 or 14 roads, including Red Road and Cathedral Road, depending on the briefing. The old post-Dashami carnival on Red Road, where large idols were paraded after immersion day, will not be held. Roadshows during the festival days will replace it. Immersion must finish before Lakshmi Puja. Adhikari said dates should follow the panjika, not an administrative whim. One report put the last immersion on 24 October, the day before Lakshmi Puja.

Money and paperwork

The state is changing how it pays committees. Adhikari asked large-budget pandals to forgo grants so smaller neighbourhood pujas can be covered. An impartial jury is to be named for the Sharad Samman awards. Fire-safety licences and electricity permissions are to be issued at no cost. Kolkata Municipal Corporation taxes on advertisement hoardings at pandals are to be waived. Joint control rooms of Kolkata Police and the municipal corporation will sit through the festival. Civic agencies have been told to line up road repairs, street lighting, fire cover, power, transport and food hygiene before the first pandal opens.

Pandal gates are not to open before Mahalaya. That instruction is aimed at the early-bird clubs that start lighting facades a week early and then fight the police over crowd control.

What changed from the last decade

Under the previous Trinamool governments the Red Road carnival became a state spectacle and a political stage. Grant lists grew. Liquor sales on Ashtami were treated as a revenue event. Adhikari's list is the first full rewrite since he took office. He has been chief minister for about 100 days. The package mixes devotion language with traffic engineering. A dry Ashtami and a DJ ban will be felt in every ward. The highway rule will be felt on the approach roads to Howrah, Salt Lake and the airport, where pandals have for years spilled onto carriageways.

Committees that built their budgets on state grants and liquor-adjacent crowds will have to recast the arithmetic. Theme artists who work to a carnival calendar lose a showcase. Police gain a written ban they can point to when a procession blocks a flyover.

Durga Puja in Kolkata is on the UNESCO intangible heritage list. The heritage citation speaks of community art, not of a state carnival. Adhikari is betting that a quieter festival still draws the crowds that hotels and airlines count on each autumn. The test is the first Ashtami night under the new order, when the anjali ends and the lanes stay dry.