GUWAHATI, Oct 25 � The Geetanagar Sarbajanin Durga Puja Committee was declared winner of the Prakriti Award 2010 instituted by the Ecotourism Society of North East for the �Best Eco-Friendly Durga Puja of Guwahati.�
The concept was to create awareness among the general masses regarding the preservation of our environment which is degrading very fast. All this started two months back with the registration of the Puja committees. We shortlisted 21 Puja committees from which 10 Puja committees were short listed for the award. The plus point of Geetanagar Sarbajanin Durga Puja Committee was their eco friendly idol, maintenance of cleanliness and hygiene although huge amount of rush was noticed during all the four days of Durga Puja celebration. The award distribution ceremony was attended by 200 people. Geetanagar Sarbajanin Durga Puja Committee kept their environment completely clean during the pre puja survey, ongoing puja survey and post puja survey. It may be noted that the programme started by paying tribute to the blast victims of October 30, 2008. According to Rajiv Kalita (general secretary of the Puja committee) this year the estimated cost for maintaining cleanliness and hygiene in the entire Puja campus was around Rs 40,000 which was last year Rs 20,000. The entire puja committee was very much excited after winning the award.
We are very much thankful to all the Puja committees for participating sportingly in the competition. This was a very positive competition where we got tremendous amount of support and encouragement from the Puja committees and the residents of Guwahati. Hopefully next year we will try to expand this competition to other parts of Assam also. All the puja committees maintained the proper guidelines regarding cleanliness and hygiene and that made the job of the selection team (judges) tougher in selecting the winner for �Prakriti Award�. Since this was our first initiative towards this unique concept, so next year we will definitely bring more varieties in the competition. We would like to share with all the Puja committees and the citizens of Guwahati that if anyone wants to organize any awareness generation camp regarding the environment and tourism then we would always love to actively participate in those camps.
