The West Bengal Radio Club (WBRC), the state’s organization of amateur radio operators, will try to make it a park and beach in the sky during the upcoming Gangasagar Mela.
Posted on – Thu, 22 Dec 22 at 04:05pm
The West Bengal Radio Club (WBRC), the state’s organization of amateur radio operators, will try to make it a park and beach in the sky during the upcoming Gangasagar Mela.
Calcutta: After a successful attempt to place West Bengal’s Sagar Island on the Islands of the Air (IoTA) map in January this year, the West Bengal Radio Club (WBRC), a group of radio amateurs from the state, will attempt to acquire it Recognized as a sky park and beach during the upcoming Gangasagar Mela.
Amateur radio operators or HAMs from all over the world look for transmissions from remote locations such as islands, national parks and beaches. In addition to IoTA, there are Parks in the Sky (PoTA) and Beaches in the Sky (BoTA) listings. This helps to gain international recognition for the position.
Although Sagar Island is not a national park, it is the largest and most populous of the more than 100 islands in the Sundarbans Delta.
As people around the world come to know about these places, the international community is grappling with issues such as rising sea levels due to climate change – a major issue facing the Sundarbans.
Sagar Island has a beach where millions of pilgrims gather for the Gangasagar Mela every year during Makar Sankranti. This is when WBRC members visit the island to maintain communication links and help the state administration in case of any disaster.
“Our team also helps to find people who went missing during Mela. Over the years we have also helped hundreds of people who stayed at the Mela site by finding their families. Apart from that, we do our best to gain recognition for the island and the event , which is believed to be the second largest such gathering in the world after Kumbha Mela. While Sagar is already on the IoTA map, we will try to list it as a park and beach. We want more people to know about the island,” WBRC Secretary Ambarish Nag Biswas said.
The Kapil Muni Ashram and Temple are also located on Sagar Island. This temple is the reason pilgrims flock to the island every January.
The WBRC also plans to try to have the temple recognized as a Temple in the Sky (ToTA). Nag Biswas added that the effort was originally initiated by a group of Indonesian HAMs to gain international recognition for their country’s temples.
The Wireless Planning and Coordination Department of the Ministry of Communications has assigned a special call sign “AT2WBRC” to WBRC for transmissions from Sagar Island during 5-17 January 2023.
