We, the members of Rani Laxmibai Durga Utsav Mandal, have been successfully organizing the Navratri festival for the last 16 years with massive participation of citizens from the entire central India area. Every year, we organise a slew of socio-cultural programmes depicting issues like India’s freedom struggle, illiteracy, autism, and child labour among others.
This year, we’re coming up with a theme based pandal titled Swapnalok (Dreamland), which would be exquisitely crafted by artist Nihar Debnath and his big team of workers from Siliguri in West Bengal. The entire team has been camping here at our volleyball ground since the last couple of months for erecting the pandal. The pandal would be first of its kind in entire Maharashtra and would attract heavy crowds from entire central India. Even our beautiful idol is being brought from Kolkata and is crafted by the local artists there. The pandal would remain open for the public from September 26 to October 6.
This year as well, we intend to organize a host of similar programmes like cultural events from children, folk dance, Ras Garba and others. However, the entry to all these events is through invitation only. It would not be open for the visitors. We would also be setting up 25 stalls that would serve various delicacies for the visitors right from juices, tea/coffee to Pav Bhaji, ice cream and other food items.
We will be setting up a pictorial gallery depicting the immense contribution of the city headquartered Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) to the country’s development, particularly in the inaccessible and inhospitable areas across the country.
Titled ‘Rashtra Seve Cha Amrut Mohotsav’, the gallery would have rare pictures and videos of commendable work done by the Sangh in the last 75 years and its contribution to the nation’s development. An audio-visual gallery would be put up at the gallery.
The mandal also conducts a lot of social activities throughout the year like visiting ‘Matoshree Old Age Home’ near Adasa and helping them with medicines and food grains, and helping the children with books and study material, cleaning the Laxmi Nagar volleyball ground by members themselves where festival is organized under ‘Swach Bharat Abhiyan’ launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and setting up artificial tanks on Laxmi Nagar grounds for immersion of Ganesh Idols to save the precious water bodies from getting polluted every year.
Starting from scratch in 2006, this mandal has grown over the years to become only in entire Central India to host the Navratri Festival with a variety of socio-cultural programmes that had guaranteed footfalls of over 50,000 visitors per day. A dedicated team of about 50 youngsters and elders, which is a right combination of youthful exuberance and experience, work together round ‘o’ clock to make this event a mega success. News cutting in various newspapers speaks about our work. We take the distinction of being the first Mandal in Vidarbha to have its dedicated website – www.laxminagardurga.in.
This year as well, we would be hosting many socio-cultural programmes aimed at evoking feelings of patriotism among the masses during the nine-day event. We request you, sir, to join us in this purely noble and charitable cause and help us to make it successful by spreading the message of peace and brotherhood in the society.
Previously, a host of popular figures visited our mandal, including noted yesteryear actress Asha Parekh, union minister for road transport Nitin Gadkari, Maharashtra deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, Rajya Sabha MPs Ajay Sancheti and Vijay Darda and others
