Children take part in the painting competition in Patna on Thursday. Picture by Ranjeet Kumar Dey

Patna, June 30: Saumya Shandilya, a Class XI student of Notre Dame Academy, sees pollution as a monster that is destroying our mother earth.

She put forward her point on a canvas today, at the local head office of State Bank of India (SBI) in Gandhi Maidan.

As part of its State Bank Day on July 1, the SBI had organised a painting competition that saw participation of around 35 students from kindergarten to Class XII.

Saumya’s painting depicted the hazardous impacts of pollution on our daily lives.

“Pollution has taken the form of a huge monster these days, and it is destroying mother nature at an exceedingly high rate. It is time that we bring this monster under control. Through this painting, I want to convey the message that we need to bring this monster down at the earliest. We need to conserve our environment through simple ways, including aforestation, treating industrial effluents before discharging them into rivers, avoiding use of fossil fuels, preventing noise pollution and others,” she said.

While participants up to Class VI could paint on a topic of their choice at the competition, students of classes VII to X made paintings on “Water is life”. Students of classes XI and XII, were given “Nature and pollution” as a topic.

Umesh Mishra, the assistant general manager, public relations department, SBI, said: “We celebrate the foundation day of State Bank of India every year on July 1. Yesterday, we had distributed fans, almirahs and sweets to students of a blind school at Kumhrar. Tomorrow we will organise an environment awareness rally.”

The participants at today’s competition were given certificates of participation by SBI general managers Ashish Kumar Rai and D. Majumdar.