Hazra Park Durgotsab 2026: The Torch Is Lit — Banner Reveal and Khuti Puja Mark the 84th Year

Durga Puja Of Kolkata

16 Aug, 2026

There is a small detail in the new Hazra Park Durgotsab logo that is easy to miss on a first glance, but impossible to unsee once you spot it — a raised arm, holding up a burning torch, drawn in bold black brushstrokes inside a red scalloped arch. It is not decoration. It is a statement. And on the morning of 15th August, that torch stopped being just a symbol on a poster and became a living flame, as Hazra Park Durgotsab performed its Khuti Puja and formally opened its 84th year.

If you have been tracking the puja calendar this August, you already know this is the season when Kolkata's clubs and committees plant their first bamboo post, light their first sacred fire, and turn a year of planning into motion. Hazra Park's turn came on a Saturday morning, and the photographs from the ceremony are the kind that remind you why this festival means so much to so many people, year after year.

The Banner: A Torch, an Arch, and 84 Years of Continuity

Before the ritual fire was lit, the banner itself had already started doing its job — announcing the puja's identity in a single, striking frame. The design leans on a red-and-white palette that feels almost like temple architecture: a scalloped arch border, repeated in a grid across the backdrop, with the torch-bearing silhouette at its centre and the words "হাজরাপার্ক দুর্গোৎসব" rendered in a rough, hand-inked script that gives it a raw, artisanal energy rather than a polished corporate look.

Above the emblem, the banner spells out the details that matter to every puja enthusiast: Sharad Utsav 2026, marking the 84th year of the tradition, organised under the banner of the Kolkata Paurakarmachari Sarbojanin Durgotsav Samiti — the Kolkata Municipal Employees' Durgotsav Committee. That lineage is worth pausing on. This is not a puja that sprang up around a theme or a sponsor. It has grown, year after year, out of the collective effort of the city's own municipal workforce — people who keep Kolkata running, coming together every autumn to build something for the goddess and for their neighbourhood.

What Actually Happens at a Khuti Puja

For readers who are newer to the world of Durga Puja and are wondering what all the fuss around "Khuti Puja" is about — think of it as the festival's opening ceremony, months before the goddess herself arrives. A khuti is a wooden or bamboo post, and planting it, along with a short ritual invoking blessings, is how a committee formally tells the goddess and the neighbourhood: preparations begin today.

It is a small ceremony in scale, but not in meaning. No pandal bamboo goes up, no idol commission is finalised, until this ritual is done. If you want to see how differently — and how similarly — clubs across Kolkata are marking this same moment this season, our Khuti Puja coverage has been tracking it committee by committee.

Inside the Ceremony at Hazra Park

The photographs from the morning show a priest seated on a richly patterned red mat, dressed in a cream kurta with a traditional print, a red-checked gamchha wrapped around his head. In front of him, a small square fire pit holds the sacred flame, built up with logs and offerings, the smoke curling upward against the backdrop of that same red-arched banner.

Around the fire, the ritual spread is generous and unmistakably Bengali in character — banana leaves piled with fruit and sweets, coconuts, betel leaves, brass and copper puja vessels, a small child's idol dressed in white resting on a stool nearby, and bundles of firewood waiting their turn. It is the kind of scene that does not need much explanation if you have grown up around a Bengali puja — you know exactly what is happening and why it matters, even from a still photograph.

A second image from the day shows the more communal side of the celebration — a group of committee members and local dignitaries gathered around the khuti post itself, wrapping it in a thick garland of orange and yellow marigolds, hands overlapping as everyone reaches in to be part of the moment. It is a small, warm detail that says a lot about how these pujas actually function — not as the work of one or two organisers, but as something the whole community physically puts its hands on.

Why the 84th Year Carries Extra Weight

Eighty-four years is not a round anniversary in the way a 50th or a 75th might be, but it is, in its own way, more remarkable — it is proof of quiet, unbroken continuity. Committees that reach this kind of age are not chasing milestones; they are simply showing up, year after year, because the tradition has become part of who they are. For a puja organised by municipal employees, that continuity also carries a particular kind of civic pride — this is a festival built by people who spend the rest of their year in service to the city, choosing to spend their festive season in service to the goddess as well.

From Khuti to Kumartuli: The Road Ahead

With the khuti planted and the fire lit, the real work of the season now begins in earnest. Bamboo structures will start rising at the pandal site over the coming weeks, artisans will begin shaping the framework of the idol, and — as with almost every major Kolkata puja — a great deal of that idol-making journey traces back to the potters' quarter of North Kolkata. If you have never explored how that process actually unfolds, our deep dive into Kumartuli is a good place to start; it is where the clay, straw, and skill behind almost every idol you will see this Puja comes from.

It is also worth remembering that Khuti Puja does not exist in isolation on the Bengali festive calendar. Many committees deliberately time their khuti planting around Rath Yatra, treating the chariot festival as an auspicious starting point for their own preparations. We have written in detail about why Rath Yatra and Khuti Puja are so closely linked in Bengali puja tradition, if you want to understand the calendar logic behind these early-season rituals.

Follow the Journey

Hazra Park Durgotsab is active on its official Facebook page, where the committee is likely to post further updates as pandal construction picks up pace. If you want a front-row seat to how this year's celebration takes shape, that page — alongside our own ongoing coverage — is the place to watch.

A Season That Has Only Just Begun

With the last week of September marking Durga Puja 2026 in Kolkata, there is still real distance to cover between a lit sacred fire in mid-August and a fully dressed idol receiving her first glimpse of the pandal lights. But that distance is exactly what makes this period so exciting to follow — every khuti planted this week is a promise, and every promise gets fulfilled, one bamboo pole, one clay layer, one coat of paint at a time.

We will be tracking Hazra Park Durgotsab as their 84th year takes shape, so keep this page bookmarked, and check back as the pandal starts to rise.