East zone swimming championship of cradles affiliated to Central Board of Secondary Education will be held at Taurian World School situated on the outskirts of Ranchi between Friday and Sunday (September 23 and 25).

Principal of the school Subhash Kumar told mediamen on Wednesday that over 400 students from across 30 CBSE schools located in the east zone will take part.

It will be organised in Under-11, Under-14, Under-17 and Under-19 age brackets for students, both for boys and girls, he said.

The meet, which will continue for three days, will witness 44 events that include freestyle, backstroke, breast stroke, butterfly, individual medley, freestyle relay and medley relay, Kumar said, adding that they had a well-maintained 25-feet-long swimming pool that met required competition standards.

The swimming meet, which was held in Kanpur last year, saw participation of over 1,000. However, this time the number of participants has dropped owing to bifurcation of areas covered under east zone, said Kumar.

East zone now covers all the CBSE schools in Jharkhand, Bihar and the Allahabad region while the rest in Bengal, Assam and the Northeast come under the far-east zone, he explained.

"Ram Balak Singh, a retired armyman who had won a silver medal in the 1970 Asian Games, will be the guest of honour at the inaugural ceremony on Friday," the principal added.

The winners of the zonal meet will be eligible to take part in the national championship to be held in Bhopal in November.