kolkata poush mela regulars can breathe easy the 125th edition of the fair which draws thousands of visitors from all over the country and the world to santiniketan will be held at its traditional venue in tagores university town this year as wellthe national green tribunal has set several preconditions for holding the fair aimed at making it more environmentfriendly but visvabharati officials have said they run an educational institution and not a civic agency vicechancellor bidyut chakraborty earlier this year admitted the university did not have the infrastructure to hold such a big fair creating a degree of uncertainty over how and where this years poush mela would be heldsenior visvabharati officials told toi on monday that the prime ministers office called soon after the universitys candid admission i met pm narendra modi in new delhi and explained our difficulties vc chakraborty said adding that the pm then entrusted seniors in the pmo to assist visvabharati in planning the fair the ball was set rolling after rajya sabha member swapan dasgupta also a member of the universitys court raised the issue in parliament following which modi took noteofficials said the union hrd ministry was asked to help visvabharati and the indian institute of technologykharagpur was given the responsibility of helping the university bring in some radical changes to this years fairpoush mela the annual handloom handicraft art and music festival is held for four days in the bengali month of poush and traditionally starts on the seventh day of the month usually enddecemberthe university has drawn ngt criticism for not being able to ensure that the fair winds up after the stipulated four days and for not being able to clean up the postfair mess satisfactorily chakraborty prompted by the flak issued a public statement earlier this year saying the university would not hold the poush mela on its campus intellectuals from across the globe reacted saying the poush mela was part of bengals tradition and should not be allowed to diea slew of changes have been brought in this year after the pmos intervention we have restricted the number of stalls to 1400 and all bookings will be done online the entire payment gateway is being designed by iit kharagpurs computer science department chakraborty said till last year 1260 stalls were officially allotted but the number often went up to 3000 the fair map too is being redesigned by university and iit experts together to weed out irregularities there will be fixed stall sizes unlike in previous yearsthe official rent till last year was rs 500 which has been hiked to rs 10000 an additional deposit of rs 20000 will be taken which will be refunded only if stalls are dismantled on time and the place is cleaned up