Accessibility and wheelchair access

Start here, because it matters more than anything else on this page. This site holds no accessibility information about any puja in Kolkata. Not step counts, not ramp presence, not entrance widths, not queue arrangements, not accessible toilets. No such dataset exists publicly, and this site will not invent one.

Every list on this page is chosen by one mechanical rule — pujas whose coordinates are confirmed, so you can see the distances and plan a short route. It is not a list of accessible pujas. Treat anything you read anywhere claiming to be such a list with real suspicion unless it names who checked and when.

Pandals are temporary structures. Many are entered up a step or a low ramp of boards, many have a raised threshold, and floors are often bamboo matting over uneven ground. Some large pujas are genuinely level; there is no way to know which without asking.

The queue is usually harder than the pandal. Managed lines run several hundred metres through barricades, sometimes with turns too tight for a chair, and once inside a line there is no exit until the end.

Kolkata's pavements are the underlying problem and they do not improve during Pujo — they get stalls on them. Between clusters, the road is often more passable than the footpath, with all that implies.

Call the committee. Most pujas have a contact on their banner and a volunteer at the gate, and many will arrange a side entrance or bring you past the queue if you ask — this is common and not an imposition. Asking on the day, at the gate, works better than you would expect.

Go in the morning. Every access problem in this festival is smaller at eight in the morning than at nine at night, by a very wide margin.

Consider bonedi bari courtyards and block pujas over big-ground pujas: fewer barricades, smaller crowds, shorter distances, and someone to ask.

Kolkata Metro's newer stations have lifts; several older ones on the north–south line do not. Check the specific station rather than the network.