Jan. 29: Barak Upyataka Banga Sahitya and Sanskriti Sammelan, the apex organisation of residents of Barak Valley, will host a four-day Bengali literary and cultural extravaganza in Hailakandi from Thursday.

It will be the 22nd edition of the biennial meet of the 40 lakh Bengalis residing in Cachar, Karimganj and Hailakandi districts of south Assam.

The programmes will be held across three venues — one is the new District Library, named Nazrul Sadan, and the other two are the mukta manchas set up at the Government Victoria Memorial Higher Secondary School and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Stadium. The West Bengal Bangla Academy is partially sponsoring the conference.

Nitish Bhattacharjee, the president of the reception committee, said delegates, writers, poets and artistes from West Bengal, Jharkhand, Andamans, New Delhi, all the northeastern states and neighbouring Bangladesh would participate in the programmes. There will be exhibitions on art and sculpture, handicrafts, Bengali Little Magazines and wall magazines along with other objects on display.

Bhattacharjee added that writers, poets and artistes from all corners of the three districts of Barak Valley are expected to be present on the occasion. The meet will host a sishu mela, loko sanskritik anusthan and other cultural programmes to showcase the best of Bengal.

A multilingual poets’ meet, general poets’ meet and Sahitya Basar will be organised to encourage budding writers and poets of Barak Valley. Bhattacharjee said that it is an excellent platform for young writers to prove themselves.

There will be a series of lectures on Little Magazines — Its Organisational Activities, Crisis of Bengali Culture and Language Outside Bengal, Recent Bengali Poems of Northeastern Region, Bengali Stories and the Diversity of the People of Northeastern States.

Santosh Kumar Mazumdar, the publicity secretary of the meet, informed that a campaign has been started throughout the country to popularise the activities and goal of the event.