An All India Devotional Song competition was today held at the holy town of Katra as part of the ongoing Navratra festival.Speaker of Jammu and Kashmir State Legislative Assembly, Kavinder Gupta who was the chief guest at the occasion hailed the organizers for organizing the event to promote budding talent. The speaker started the programme by lightening the traditional lamp in presence of MLA Reasi Ajay Nanda and ADC Reasi Shiv Kumar Gupta.
Kavinder Gupta while extending the greetings of the Navratra Festival praised the organizers of All India Devotional Song Competition, for putting in their best efforts to provide the young talent a platform to exhibit their singing skills. He said the event has also helped in attracting huge number of pilgrim tourists to the state. Gupta said that the event has become hugely popular and stressed on its continuation in future too.
Earlier, Chairman of All India Devotional song competition, Rakesh Wazir, delivered welcome address and highlighted the importance of this competition. He said that grand finale of the All India Devotional Song Competition will be held on 21st of Oct. and winner will be awarded with Rs. 2 Lakh and a recording contract with Venus Records & Tapes ltd.As many as 13 participants participated on the second day of competition.In the preliminary round of competition Chaman Lehri of Reasi was adjudged 1st, Mr. Mukesh Sharma from Jandrah adjudged 2nd and 3rd position was shared jointly by Aarti from Jammu & Vaishali Prajapati from Udhampur. Cash prizes of 5000/- , 3000/- and 2000/- were given to Ist, 2nd and 3rd position holders respectively.The Devotional Song Competition was judged by the panel of experts including Brij Mohan leading Music Composer, Anupama Sharma Professor Music Degree College Parade and Pt. Subash Ghosh from West Bengal.MLA Reasi, Mr Ajay Nanda, ADC Reasi Shiv Kumar Gupta, SSP Reasi Surjit Kumar, SP Katra, Sumir kotwal, SDM Katra Anil Kumar, DD Tourism S K Atri, AD Toursim Ashima, AD Tourism Jammu Dr Umesh Shan, senior officers of different departments, members of Navratra Celebration Committees, prominent citizens and large number of people were present on the occasion.