National Book Trust officials address the news meet in Patna on Wednesday. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, Nov. 9: The nine-day National Book Fair, organised by National Book Trust (NBT) in association with the state human resource development (HRD) department, will begin from November 11 at Gandhi Maidan.

Preparations for hosting the book fair in a big way are on a war footing. This time, the event will be bigger compared to the one held last year.

According to the organisers, people visiting this year’s fair will have 200 stalls to choose their favourite titles from. Last year, the number of stalls was about 175.

The HRD department is organising the fair as part of National Education Day being celebrated by the state government to commemorate the birthday of the country’s first education minister, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.

Chief minister Nitish Kumar will formally inaugurate the book fair through video conferencing from Bettaih. The fair ground will be open for visitors from 11am to 8pm every day and entry will be free of cost.

“Over 200 stalls will be set up across 70,000sqft,” Rakesh Kumar, an NBT official, said today. “This year’s fair has been designed in a way that will attract school students. Most of the books that will be up for sale will be of children’s interests,” he added. Besides books for the children, special emphasis will be on classics and literature.

Many national and international agencies will set up stalls at Gandhi Maidan. Notable among them are National Book Trust, Sahitya Academy and National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language.

Kumar said there would be live interactions on various topics. Distinguished persons from various fields will take part in the discussions.

As part of cultural activities, there will be book release by some of eminent authors of from various parts of the country. The book fair will also give an opportunity to people to meet a number of popular authors, who will release their books during the nine-day event. During interactions with these authors, the visitors can directly ask them questions.

A painting exhibition for children will be an added attraction of the book fair, which will have stalls on career opportunities in the field of media. There will also be a discussion on the role of the media in present time.

Sams Ahmad, a senior NBT official, said: “Bihar has a large number of people who love to read books. There has also been a significant increase in their number. We expect that the footfall in this year’s fair will be higher compared to previous years.”

Special sitting arrangements have been made for senior citizens who will attend the discussions. The organisers said private security personnel will be deployed along with policemen to ensure that no untoward incident occurs during the event. A map of all stalls at the fair ground will be on display at the entrance of Gandhi Maidan.

The organisers added that focus would be to get quality books on science, social science, literature and mathematics as the theme National Education Day is quality education.