By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: The Ardhendu Chaudhuri Charitable Trust (ACCT) organized “Mawpremfest” – a two-day inter-locality competition testing brawn, beauty and skill – was inaugurated by Water Resource Minister, AL Hek at the Rilbong Community Hall Ground.
In his speech, Hek said that he has learnt much from the festival. “I have not seen such a festival with so much of variety,” he said adding that he intends to replicate the festival back in his constituency.
The festival – participated by 10 localities of Mawprem Assembly Constituency – was organized under the supervision of MLA Manas Chaudhuri and Managing Trustee, ACCT.
The event was organized for the youths of the locality to showcase their talent in various event, such as, beauty pageant, dance competition, popular Hindi Film-based “Antakshari”, marathon, arm wrestling, music unplugged, baby show, besides a variety of games of skill.
The artistes of Geetnajali Dance Academy enthralled the audience by their rendition in the morning session on Saturday.
The event started with march past, paying respect to the chief guest, release of colorful balloon with selected persons from various localities of Mawprem being felicitated. The felicitated persons were Dijen Dhar (Mawbah), Sekhar Bhattacharjee (Rilbong), Bir Bahadur Chetry (Jhalupara), L Kyndiah (Paltan Bazar), Faizal Ahmed (New Kench’s Trace), PO Dohling (Upper Mawprem) and JC Lyngdoh (Bishnupur).
The second part of the event saw competitions like tug of war, games of skill, sack race, football shooting, memory test and Antakshari conducted by Antara Chowdhury.
Chaudhuri gave away the prizes to winners of the event.
The evening session saw competition of modern song with solo dance judged by Devi Goswami Dey, Pushpalata Rathod and Mohua Gupta Chowdhury.
The locality winning most number of events in the two day event will emerge as the champion of the soft contest whose underlying idea is to create a sense of pride in one’s own locality.