Ranchi, Dec. 1: Come tomorrow, the Ranchi Women’s College would reverberate with song and dance as 600-odd students from 20 universities are set to perform on the campus.

The college is playing host to the East Zone Inter-University Youth Festival with 27 events lining up for the next five days.

Ranchi University vice-chancellor A.A. Khan said the registration process of participants would start from 9.30am tomorrow at the colleges’ science block. While the festival would be inaugurated at the university headquarters tomorrow, the events would be organised at the college’s two venues — arts and science blocks — from Wednesday.

“Association of Indian Universities will send three judges for each of the 27 events. We are trying to do our best to ensure that the youth meet sponsored by the association and Union ministry of youth affairs and sports passes without any glitch. We want the fest to be grand,” said Khan.

The events include music (classical, light, group song, patriotic and folk), dance (folk tribal and classical), literary (quiz, debate in Hindi and English and recitation), theatre (one-act play, skits, mime, mimicry) and fine arts (on-the-spot painting, collage, cartooning, rangoli) among others.

Pro-vice-chancellor Salil Kumar Roy said out of about 60 universities in this zone, about 20 are participating in the meet — quite encouraging given the past records. “Teams have started arriving. Many more are expected to come tomorrow,” he said.

The five-day meet would be inaugurated by Assembly Speaker Alamgir Alam at Maulana Azad Senate Hall at the university headquarters.

The participating universities include BBA Bihar University (Muzzaffarpur), Banaras Hindu University, Berhampur University (Orissa), Indira Gandhi Krishi Vishwavidyalaya (Raipur), Kalyani University (Bengal), Manipur University, Vidyasagar University (Bengal), Gauhati University, Indian School of Mines University, Jadavpur University (Bengal), Lalit Narayan Mithila University (Darbhanga), Pandit Ravishankar University (Raipur), Sidho-Kanhu-Murmu University, Vinoba Bhave University, Visva-Bharati (Santiniketan), Deen Dayal Upadhayaya University (Gorakhpur), Birsa Agriculture University, Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapith (Varanasi), Awadhesh Pratap Singh University (Rewa, Madhya Pradesh), Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra and Ranchi University itself.

In the run-up to the festivals, university officials are facing wrath of student activists, who alleged that few elite colleges of urban area find participation in the university team.

Interestingly, the university could not organise an inter-college youth festival so as to select the final participants for the meet.

It only conducted a selection trial at Ranchi Women’s College in the last week of November after which students of colleges either based in Ranchi or Jamshedpur found place.

They would represent Ranchi University at the meet.