Bengal govt moves to end Guild’s monopoly over Book Fair; brings RSS, BJP voices into panel
The West Bengal government has constituted a 24-member high-powered committee to oversee the International Kolkata Book Fair 2027, an official said on Wednesday.
The move is aimed at making the annual event more inclusive and reducing the dominance of any single organisation, the official said.
Interestingly, the Publishers and Booksellers' Guild's current secretary and president, Tridib Kumar Chatterjee and Sudhangshushekhar De, respectively, have not been included in the committee, though other representatives of the organisation have been made members.
The Guild had been organising the book fair since its inception.
The Information and Cultural Affairs Department official said chief minister's chief advisor Subrata Gupta held meetings at the state secretariat on August 17 and 21 to discuss the infrastructure and organisational framework of the book fair, held at Salt Lake Central Park.
Following discussions with representatives of the National Book Trust (NBT), the Department of Mass Education Extension and Library Services, publishing houses and various social and religious organisations, the government decided to constitute the committee, the official said.
The committee includes senior monks of the Ramakrishna Mission and Bharat Sevashram Sangha, as well as Publishers and Booksellers Guild representatives Debajyoti Dutta, Anil Acharya, Milind De and Rajkumar Barman.
Other members include known RSS pracharak and BJP leaders Debjit Sarkar, Saptarshi Choudhury, journalist Prosenjit Bakshi, poet Binayak Bandyopadhyay, among others.
According to the government's plan, the 2027 Kolkata Book Fair will not remain under the sole control of the Publishers and Booksellers Guild, which had been solely holding it since its inception.
The Guild, Eastern Zonal Cultural Centre (EZCC) and the National Book Trust will jointly organise the fair, while the newly constituted 24-member committee will function in an overall advisory capacity.
The move comes amid longstanding demands that the fair should be opened up to publishers, printers and booksellers of all sizes instead of being controlled by a single organisation, earlier known to be close to the erstwhile ruling party.
The issue had also acquired a political dimension recently, with BJP state president and Rajya Sabha MP Samik Bhattacharya calling for the book fair to become a "universal platform", inclusive and independent of any single organisation's control, and a symbol of "Indianness".
Bhattacharya made the remarks at an event organised at Mahajati Sadan to mark the birth anniversary of litterateur Buddhadeb Guha, which was attended by more than 100 publishers.
