Birla Planetarium banks on a pleasant winter to go back to pre-Covid footfall
Times of India | 3 December 2025
Kolkata: MP Birla Planetarium (MPBP) authorities are banking on fair weather this winter to make up for the footfall deficit from April to Oct 2025 and continue the recovery momentum post-Covid. The lower turnout in the first half of the year was primarily due to heavy and prolonged rain this monsoon.
By Oct, the 63-year-old planetarium attracted 2.5 lakh visitors. In the next half, it needs to attract more than 3.5 lakh visitors to stay on the growth track. The week between Christmas Eve and New Year's Day is usually fully booked. "While we have seven shows daily at present, we may increase the count to up to 10 or even 12 if required," said MPBP curator S Datta.
The visitor count, which crashed to 83,000 in 2020-21 from a high of 6.9 lakh in 2019-20, has inched up steadily. However, it is still nearly 1 lakh short of the pre-pandemic level. "When the planetarium reopened in 2017-18 with a new projection machine and system after a hiatus of three years, there was a huge craze that saw a turnout of nearly 7 lakh that year. This continued for the next two years before Covid forced a shutdown for nine months," said Datta.
Incidentally, Hindi shows are most popular at MPBP since 50% of the visitors are from neighbouring states Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, and the north-east. Hence, the planetarium has three Hindi shows daily against two shows in Bengali and English each.
MP Birla Institute of Fundamental Research secretary S K Daga on Tuesday announced the selection of Yashwant Gupta, distinguished professor and centre director at the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics at TIFR, Pune. The biennial award, instituted in 1993, is being given for the first time since 2019. Among the past recipients are Jayant Vishnu Narlikar, Govind Swarup, K Kasturirangan and APJ Abdul Kalam.