A participant in the rock music competition at Spring Fest in IIT Kharagpur last year. Telegraph picture

Guwahati, Oct. 30: The headbangers are in for a ball as winter prepares for “Spring”.

As Spring Fest 2015, the annual festival of IIT Kharagpur, gears up for its 56th edition in January, the organisers of one of Asia’s biggest college meets are anticipating a record turnout from the Northeast, thanks to the introduction of online entries and the fest’s rock contest gaining popularity.

The number of participants from the region had gone way beyond the three-figure mark in the festival’s 2011 edition. This year, the figure is likely to cross 300.

“Over the years, the festival has seen an increasing presence of Northeast metal bands in Wildfire, the rock competition, particularly in the past three editions. Last year, we had over 200 competitors. This year, with the introduction of online entries and a number of prizes up for grabs, we expect the figure to go beyond 300,” Aditya Agarwal, a member of the festival’s organising committee, told The Telegraph today.

The four-day social and cultural festival, which features a multitude of fun-based events such as dramatics, dance, music, photography, case study and quiz, gets under way on January 23. In recent years, the festival has recorded an average footfall of 30,000 people.

The organisers are in touch with institutes such as IIT Guwahati, Guwahati College of Architecture, NIT Silchar, Tezpur University, Don Bosco University, Azara and NIT Sikkim. “We are also in talks with several bands in Shillong, which is referred to as the rock capital of the country,” he said. These are bands by former participants since the competition is also open to students who have graduated and formed metal bands.

Apart from the total prize money of Rs 5 lakh that the top five rock bands will pocket, there’s a lot more at stake.

“Apart from the platform the festival seeks to provide, the winner of the rock contest gets Rs 1.5 lakh, a chance to record an album and free internship (in a music institute). Last year, the winners were trained at Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music in Tamil Nadu. A rock band from Guwahati, Fatal Malice, was among the three from the region that made it to the finals. It came second, while Noyze Akademi from Calcutta were first and Hidden Identity, also from Calcutta, came third,” he said.

The festival’s website, www.springfest.in, will be launched next week. “The participants can register by mid-November and only then can we confirm the numbers. In the preliminary rounds, they will be asked to post a six-minute video of their performance online,” Agarwal said.

Not just rock music, the festival’s flagship events, Nukkad and Shuffle, also draw healthy participation. “There were over a 100 participants from the Northeast in Nukkad, a street play competition, in 2011 when it was introduced. Shuffle, which features western free-style dance, hip-hop and B-boying, among others, is another attraction,” he added.

For the singing enthusiasts, the festival has introduced a solo singing competition, SF Idol, in association with the Shankar Mahadevan Academy of Music.

“Star Nights is another eye catcher. The likes of Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, Salim-Sulaiman, KK, The Raghu Dixit Project, Agnee, Indian Ocean, Swarathma, Parikrama, Euphoria and Pentagram have featured in the event apart from international bands such as Monuments and TesseracT,” he said.