Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government has decided to make the Konark Festival a world class tourism and cultural show from this season. The festival this year will be held from December 1 to 5, the peak tourist season in Odisha.
At a high-level meeting, the State chief secretary Asit Padhi, Thursday directed the culture and tourism departments to make necessary preparation for making the festival a grand show this time.
The meeting decided that this year the top cultural troop from Indonesia will perform in the festival. Besides, the cultural troops having national and international reckon from different parts of India would participate in the five-day festival. Each evening will have an Odissi programme followed by performances by other classical dance troops. Kathak, Kuchipudi, Bharatnatyam, Mohiniatttam, Manipuri would be presented by various troops from various States.
The State tourism secretary, Vishal Kumar Dev, gave a presentation outlining the preparations for the festival. He informed the meeting that Konark Festival would be followed by other great festivals like the Mukteswara Festival from January 11 to 16, 2020, Rajarani Festival from January 18 to 20, and Dauli Utsav from February 6 to 8, 2020. Dev said that advance preparations have been started for all these mega cultural festivals of the State.
Culture secretary Manoranjan Panigrahi also participated in the discussion.
