Puja Udjapan Parishad: Festival cost to be curtailed to help refugees

Bangladesh Puja Udjapan Parishad has decided to curtail expenses during the Durga Puja, the largest Hindu religious festival of the country, to provide assistance to the Rohingya refugees on behalf of the Hindu community.

“We will curtail the expenses of the festival across the country and donate the money to help the Rohingya refugees,” said Tapas Kumar Pal, general secretary of the Parishad, at a views-exchange meeting yesterday.

The Parishad organised the meeting at Dhakeshwari National Temple Auditorium on the eve of the Durga Puja.

The Puja is going to be held between September 27 and September 30.

As many as 30,077 mandaps (makeshift temples) will be set up across the country, 231 of those in Dhaka city, he said.

Last year, the number was 29,395.

Pointing at the rise, Hindu leaders lamented that though the number of mandaps has increased, their population is shrinking in the country for what they said was repression on the minority group.

Saying that communal and militant attacks shadowed last year's celebrations, the Parishad leaders said they are aware of the incidents of dismantling idols of the goddesses in Gazipur, Manikganj, Dinajpur, Satkhira, Magura and Kushtia.

They urged the local Hindu community leaders to be more vigilant to avert any untoward situation during the festival.

The Parishad demanded that the government facilitate undisrupted supply of power and drinking water at the mandaps during the Puja.

The government should declare a three-day public holiday during the Pujato be celebrated on September 27-30, they said.

The leaders added they have given special instruction to all of their wing organisations to uphold the sanctity of both the Durga Puja and Muharram.