Thiruvananthapuram: The Kerala state youth festival will be held in Alappuzha district in December. Education Minister Prof. C Raveendranath announced that the government has decided to conduct the youth festival without any celebrations as mentioned earlier.
As part of the youth festival, a sports fest will be conducted in October in the State capital Thiruvananthapuram and science fest will be held in November in Kannur district, the minister said.
He also added that there would be no inauguration or concluding functions for all the fests.
Earlier, an order was issued by government to cancel all the fests due to the flood situation in the State recently. It was also decided to donate the cost of these celebrations to the chief minister’s disaster relief fund.
Officials and ministers have convinced Pinarayi Vijayan to re-consider the decision claiming that the students will lose an opportunity to gain grace marks without Kalolsavam (native term referring to the State youth festival).
The decision to re-conduct the youth festival "without celebrations" was taken after this.
The education minister also said that even though celebrations will be avoided, students will get every opportunity to showcase their talent.
It was also decided to cancel all official celebrations of the government for one year following the floods. This includes school-university festivals, International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) and other celebrations of the tourism programmes.