HM Nerurkar at the groundbreaking ceremony on Saturday. (Bhola Prasad)

Jamshedpur, Dec. 1: XLRI’s Tata Auditorium will soon have competition in terms of size from Loyola School.

Bistupur-based Loyola School today set the ball rolling for construction of a 2,953 square metre auditorium on its campus, which once ready, will be the biggest in any school of the state.

The auditorium, the foundation stone of which was laid by Tata Steel managing director H.M. Nerurkar today, will come up at a cost of Rs 4 crore and will have a seating capacity of more than 1,500 putting it on par with that of XLRI’s double-storied structure.

The super-structure, which will be fully air-conditioned, will come up in place of the school’s existing Fasy Auditorium that will be demolished.

The co-ed school, which was established way back in 1947 and has student strength of more than 3,200, at present is able to accommodate only 600 students at a time in its auditorium.

Speaking to The Telegraph, after laying the foundation stone of the mega-structure, Nerurkar underlined the needs of co-curricular activities that helps in the all-round development of children.

“For imbibing leadership qualities one needs non-linear growth that goes beyond academics. All the schools nowadays conduct extra-curricular activities and a hall of such magnitude will help the students to excel in theatre, elocution, debate and quiz. This will in turn help in shaping their personality and benefit them in their career,” said Nerurkar.

Loyola school sources said the structure would also be named Fasy Auditorium and the junior section and computer lab would be relocated in it.

“The construction work will begin from Monday. However, the demolition of the junior section, the computer lab and the Fasy Auditorium itself will take place after the ICSE board exams (in April),” school principal Father Victor Misquith said.

The auditorium will have two green rooms and three classrooms on the second floor besides a music room on the ground floor. It will also house a hall on the second floor, which will be used as computer lab and will be able to hold 55 machines.

“We will not have any chairs in the auditorium. An auditorium of this size has been the demand of the students and the alumni for long to meet the growing need of hosting several intra and inter-school events,” Father Misquith said.