Participants at the youth festival in Berhampur on Tuesday. Pictures by Gopal Krishna Reddy

Berhampur, Nov. 25: Students from 21 universities across the country have come together at Berhampur University to celebrate the 30th inter-university central zone five-day youth festival — Yuva Prativa Parva 2014 that kicked off today.

Altogether 610 students are participating in the festival organised by Berhampur University in collaboration with the Association of Indian Universities (AIU), New Delhi.

“The festival will feature 25 events, including music, dance, literary events, theatre and fine arts. The events will be held at senate hall, auditorium, MBA conference hall, new conference hall near the library and the distance education centre hall,” Prakash Chandra Mishra, head of the commerce department and also the organising secretary of the festival.

“Out of Rs 41 lakh, which will be spent on the event, Rs 16 lakh will be provided by the AIU. Around Rs 2 lakh will be collected through registration fees from the participants, accompanists and team officials. The remaining fund will be met through cultural fees collected from each students every year. Last year, we had collected Rs 24 lakh as cultural fees,” said Manmath Padhy, registrar of Berhampur University and also the chief patron of the festival.

Bindia Soni, a chemistry student from Bundelkhand University at Jhansi in Uttar Pradesh, performed in a road show at a rally taken out from the administrative block to the university ground. She played the role of Rani Laxmi Bai. She was the star attraction of the Bundelkhand University Jhansi team.

Similarly, students of Bhopal’s Barkatullah University cleaned the road while performing ‘Clean India, green India’ and those from MATS University, Raipur, ‘Rawet’ folk dance. Teams from Central University, Koraput, and the host Berhampur University are participating in the youth festival along with those from Bilaspur, Bhopal, Raipur, Amravati and Gwalior universities.