TRS Wants National Festival Status For Medaram

Telangana Endowments & Housing Minister A Indrakaran Reddy today urged Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu to help get national festival status accorded to the Sammakka Saralamma tribal festival, also known as the Medaram festival, held in Telangana biennially, and to provide funds for the same.

The minister along with MPs and other officials had called on the Vice President in Delhi and extended to him an invitation to attend the festival scheduled to be held from January 31 to February 3.

Speaking to mediapersons later, Reddy said that the Vice President had assured the delegation that he would talk to the concerned officials to grant national festival status to the Medaram festival. The Vice President had also promised to attend the mega festival to be held in the state, Reddy said.

Shedding light on the state government's efforts towards promoting the festival, the minister said that elaborate arrangements had been made for the grand tribal festival. He shared that the state had allotted an amount of Rs 80 crores for the festival, and that national level publicity would be given to the celebrations which would span four days. He said that over one crore people from various states were expected to attend the jathara, and expressed hope that it would be accorded national festival status.

He also said that the state would provide a helicopter facility from Hyderabad to Medaram to transport people to the festival for a darshan of the presiding deities. A special helipad facility would be constructed at Medaram for that purpose, he added.