Pune Fest 10 days away, no sign of PMC funds yet

Mayor Mohansingh Rajpal says this year festival organisers have not sent letter seeking sponsorship

Though the annual Pune Festival officially kicked off its preliminary programmes yesterday with a dance competition to promote young talent, the 24-year-old festival is yet to receive sponsorship funding from the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC).


Cash-strapped: The Pune Festival is a 24-year-old event. This year the
organisers say they fear they will not have enough funds to hold all the
planned programmes. File pic

The festival is just 10 days away, but the PMC sponsorship it gets every year has not come this time.
Veteran classical dancer Manisha Sathe inaugurated Indradhanu at the Kesri Wada in the presence of Krishnakant Kudale, chief organiser, Pune Festival, and Ravindra Durve, organiser of Indradhanu. About 250 child artistes in the age group of 7 to 14 years participated in the programme.

The Pune Festival is controlled by Congress leader and city MP Suresh Kalmadi, who was arrested recently in the multi-crore Commonwealth Games scam. The festival receives PMC sponsorship of Rs 35 lakh every year.
Mayor Mohansingh Rajpal said the PMC had not yet approved any amount for the Pune Festival.

Rajpal said the reason why no sponsorship was approved yet was that no letter from the festival organisers had received asking for the amount. "We can't provide the amount to the organisers unless a formal letter asking for the sponsorship comes to us," he said. "The letter has not yet come to us and, therefore, there is no question of approving the amount for the festival."

Chairman of the Standing Committee Ganesh Bidkar also said no letter had been received from the festival organisers.u00a0"This is my first term as the committee chairman, but as per my knowledge the proposal comes from the PMC administration for the approval of the prescribed amount for Pune Festival," he said.

He added that the Standing Committee meeting had been scheduled on Tuesday and there was no topic related to festival sponsorship up for discussion. "There is nothing seeking approval for sponsorship," he said. "Otherwise, there is no problem for such an approval for the Pune Festival if it is a practice to provide the sponsorship amount every year."

Pune Festival chief organiser Kudale said so far they had not asked for anything from PMC. "We did not ask as we are not sure we will get the money. This time we may face problems raising the money for the festival and some of the programmes may be dropped from the festival. We hope for the better, and our final programme list shall be declared soon," he said.

A senior-level office-bearer of the festival said they were short of money. "Yes, we have a funding problem this year," said the office-bearer, requesting anonymity. "Every year, we have a huge budget of over Rs 1 crore, but this year we have still not able to meet our target."

Rs 30 lakh for 500 Ganapati mandals
The Standing Committee of the PMC has approved Rs 30 lakh for Ganapati mandals in the city this year. "These mandals are among the smaller ones and we provide them a token amount ranging from Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000," said Ganesh Bidkar, Chairman Standing Committee.