In Pakistani Punjab, where Vasant Panchami is kept as the folk kite-flying festival Basant by people of multiple religious backgrounds rather than as a specifically Hindu observance of Saraswati, the authorities imposed an effective ban on public kite flying in Lahore and much of the province from the mid-2000s onward, driven by a rising death toll from glass-coated or metal-reinforced kite string, known as manjha, which had caused fatal injuries to motorcyclists and others whose throats were cut by strings crossing roads at speed.
The ban has been imposed, challenged and partially reinstated multiple times since, reflecting a genuine tension between a beloved seasonal folk tradition with deep local attachment and a documented public safety problem that manufacturers of the more dangerous strings did not stop supplying despite the risk, so that the same spring kite-flying impulse that Vasant Panchami channels peacefully in most of India's Punjab has become, on the Pakistani side of the same cultural region, the subject of an unusually persistent and unresolved public safety and law enforcement dispute.
Basant Panchami also has a place in Sikh tradition, distinct from the Saraswati and kite-flying observances described above: Sikh accounts hold that Guru Gobind Singh celebrated the arrival of spring at Anandpur Sahib with festivities that included kite-flying and the wearing of yellow, and some gurdwaras, particularly around Anandpur, mark the day with related community celebrations, a further instance of the same spring turning point carrying independent meanings across neighbouring traditions of the Punjab region.