Kashmiri girls perform during the programme. Picture by Gautam Dey

Dhanbad, Feb. 25: Rukhsana Zabeen, who travelled more than 5,000 km to stage Kashmiri folk dance Rouf, could hardly believe that the coal capital would turn a cold shoulder to them last evening.

It could have been a huge turnout for watching the 31-member team of folk artistes under the J&K Academy of Art, Culture and Languages perform in tandem at Town Hall, but the “lack of communication” among several government departments offered an empty auditorium for the troupe, which had chosen Jharkhand the second one of its four-state tour.

While officials of the state department of art, culture, sports and youth affairs said an official communiqué had been sent to the district administration in time, the latter stated it had got only one day to arrange the event — organised under the inter-state cultural exchange scheme sponsored by Sangeet Natak Akademi — in the 500-seat Town Hall.The assistant director of the department, H.P. Sinha, said: “The districts were informed about the programme over the phone and fax on February 7. A fax was also sent to the district public relation department on February 20.” District public relation officer Rashmi Sinha, however, said it was not the responsibility of the public relation department to organise such an event and the absence of a liaison officer from the department of culture had worsened the situation at the local level.

The troupe, which came here on Monday from Goa, performed at Ramgarh on Thursday followed by another in Bokaro the next day, said the organisation’s deputy secretary, Jammu Arvinder Singh Amn, adding that they had got good for performing the folk songs. The team, however, had to perform for few spectators at Town Hall here when the programme began half-an-hour late at 7.30.

However, H.P. Sinha said they would ensure that such “misunderstanding” not repeated.