Stories
KMC to Raid Durga Puja Food Stalls: Ensuring Safety Amid Festive Feasting
- •Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) plans surprise raids on food stalls near Durga Puja pandals to ensure food safety during the festive season.
- •Inspections will focus on ingredient quality, hygiene, preparation methods, raw materials, and potential food adulteration, including sauces.
- •Food found unfit for consumption will be discarded, and unhygienic stall operators will be required to make corrections.
- •The crackdown extends beyond temporary Puja stalls to include restaurants and eateries across Kolkata during the festive period.
- •This initiative follows a city-wide food safety drive in September, where 224kg of food was discarded and 54 establishments received suspension notices.
Key Questions Answered
KMC inspections will focus on hygiene conditions, preparation methods, the safety of raw materials, and the quality of ingredients, spices, and accompaniments like sauces. Inspectors will also look for food adulteration, discard unsafe food, and require corrective measures for unhygienic operations.
Puja committees must obtain an NoC from KMC to display hoardings, banners, and flexes. Under these rules, committees agree to remove advertisements at their own cost, face penalties for non-compliance, restrict temporary structures and bamboo scaffolding to 22 feet in height, avoid putting up ads before Mahalaya, and remove them within a week of Dashami.
During the September 1 to 7 drive, civic teams inspected 592 establishments, collected samples from 161 locations, discarded 224kg of unsafe food, and issued suspension notices to 54 establishments across 144 wards. Separately, across wider inspections, authorities seized stale dairy and frozen meat, sealed restaurants, and cancelled multiple eatery licences.
