A festival that runs on appeals

THRISSUR: As appeals continue to flood the Kerala School Youth Festival, the organisers are laughing their way to the bank. For the first time in the history of the annual gala, its appeal committees have collected a record revenue. The lower appeal committee alone has received about `30 lakh by this time with the Deputy Directors of Education of 14 districts sanctioning 575 appeals.The kitty takes care of about half the operating costs of these committees.Last year, there were 359 appeals, including higher committee and various courts’ appeals.The parents of the candidate have to pay `5,000 as fees for every appeal in the lower committee and `1,000 in the higher committee.“This time the programme committee is expecting around 150 more appeals through various courts such as munsif court, Lokayukta and consumer court apart from the 55 appeals filed in the higher committee until Tuesday evening against the statelevel results announced. So in all likelihood, the festival could see about 850 appeals. That’s a hundred per cent increase from the previous year,” said T V Madanamohanan, programme committee convener of the festival.Kozhikode tops the list with 79 appeals, closely followed by Palakkad and Thrissur with 62 and 57, respectively.Idukki and Thiruvanthapuram reported fewer number of appeals with 21 each. The avalanche of appeals that continues as the festival progresses is affecting the smooth conduct of the festival, said Madanamohanan.Normally, each contest sees about 14 participants, but the flood of appeal is causing unexpected delay to events, often two or three times more than the prescribed time schedule.Almost all items, especially the more glamorous dance and other group items, had more than 14 participants.In some solo dance events, the total number of ‘appealed participants’ went upto 35-40.