Govt to organise annual statelevel dance and singing talent hunts

NEW DELHI: To promote and preserve the rich arts and cultural heritage, the Delhi government has planned several initiatives such as creation of new language academies, including a dedicated institution for English, annual literary events, and a research fellowship scheme for scholars interested in the city’s history.

The government has earmarked ₹36 crore separately in the current budget to achieve the goals.

The government has also proposed to organise state-level dance and singing talent hunt shows in all 70 assembly constituencies annually.

The initiatives were announced by Delhi finance minister Manish Sisodia on Thursday in his budget speech.

Currently, the city has academies for six languages — Hindi, Urdu, Sindhi, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Maithili-bhojpuri.

These institutions work to propagate, promote and development of the language, literature arts and culture.

Terming the government’s decision a “positive move”, Ajay Kumar, Director (Projects) of Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), said the state government should go further and create job opportunities for people who are into the field of research.

“Certainly, it is a positive move. People know about the city’s rich heritage but very research on it. I would suggest that the government should also create avenues for employment though conservation and arts and culture management programmes,” he said.

Presenting his fourth budget, Sisodia said digitisation of 20 lakh archival records has been completed and that it would be available to research scholars across the globe from next month.

The digitisation project started around seven months ago.