The much-awaited annual Rose Festival will be held at the Rose Garden here from February 20. Vivek Pratap Singh, Commissioner, Municipal Corporation, Chandigarh, on Wednesday, gave details of the three-day 43rd Rose Festival in which visitors from Haryana and Punjab too come besides those from Chandigarh.
The Festival is jointly organized by the Tourism department of Chandigarh Administration and Chandigarh Municipal Corporation here. While the day time activities are organised by MCC, the Tourism department looks after the evening time programs for three days. “We are expecting more crowd this time than the last year”, said Singh. This time the administration has roped in Sherry Maan, renowned Punjabi folk singer for one performance besides Bollywood celebrity and BJP MP Babul Supriyo to entertain the public.
Around 829 varieties of roses would welcome the visitors this time during the festival from February 20 to 22. Apart from these, 1368 beds of flowers have been decorated beautifully with 37,000 plants of different types of roses. Adviser to the administrator Vijay Dev will inaugurate the festival on February 20.
This time, theme of the rose festival is “National Integration”. local authorities have asked various folk dance groups from different states including liharoba from Manipur, Sidhi Dhamal from Gujrat, Bihu from Assam, Behropia from Rajasthan, lavani from Maharashtra, Folk dance from leh ladhakh and Nagada and Been jogi from Haryana to come here for performance.
Besides this Hasya Kavi Sammelan will take place in the evening of opening day by Manji Singh, Arun Jemini, Suryakant Pandey, Ras Bihari Gaur and Padam Albela. Sufi Evening will also be organized on Feb 21 followed by Musical Evening on closing day by eminent artists from region including Tripat Kaur, renowned Punjabi singer, Param Chandel, Mahesh Sharma, Tarun, Nishant, Sharan Kaur, Rajan, Gurkanwa amongst others.
A musical group of ‘divine eyes’-artists from National Association for the Blind, Chandigarh will give their performance on Feb 21 here. Organisers also roped in Dr Gopal Krishan Shah, prof. of University of Delhi for Sitar Vadan. Puppet show, magic show would also be organised besides other flower competitions in different categories and other competitions including kite flying competition, rose king and rose queen for senior citizens and Antakshri etc. here.