Music event to kickstart Margalla Festival today

Mayor seeks public suggestions on making annual event more colourful

ISLAMABAD: After releasing and revising the schedule at least two times, the Capital Development Authority on Friday said it was geared to kick off its annual Margalla Festival with a grand musical event scheduled for today.

During a meeting to review preparations for the festival at CDA headquarters on Friday, arrangements for formal inauguration ceremony were deliberated on.

Islamabad Metropolitan Corporation (IMC) Mayor and CDA Chairman Sheikh Anser Aziz were told that the festival would be kicked off through a mega Sufi musical night on January 28 at Lok Virsa. Artists including the likes of Arieb Azher, Aliwer Saada, Gul Muhammad and Mohsin Jan are expected to perform during the event.

Deputy Mayor Zeeshan Ali Naqvi told the meeting that said that the festival aimed to provide quality entertainment to residents of the twin cities and would see a host of sports and cultural activities in collaboration with different sports and cultural associations and federations.

Naqvi pointed out that activities depicting the cultures of all four provinces, along with Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, would be organised during the festival.

The meeting further decided that in order to add more colourful programmes to the festival, companies and people should submit their suggestions latest by February 5.

Much-delayed

The CDA had late in December issued a detailed plan on its Facebook page listing out activities for the three-month long festival. The planner listed that some activities, such as the sporting tournaments would kick off from January 3 with a badminton tournament. The grand sufi night had been slated for January 21, while the entire festival was scheduled to conclude in early April.

However, just a few days later, that schedule was revised with the sufi night still headlining the festival but with all other sporting events scheduled to follow it. The festival was also extended to the end of April.

In fact, people who visited the sports complex for the sporting tournaments according to the old schedule complained that there was nothing there.

According to a fresh schedule for the festival, issued at the beginning of the week, all events have been pushed back further to follow the inaugural event on January 28.

The sports events, though, will not start before February 8, again with the badminton tournament, and are expected to continue through to March 24 when the final competition, a swimming contest, would be held. Further details can be found on CDA’s Facebook page.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 28^th, 2017.