TIRUPATI: The three-day 'World Spiritual Festival' will start in Tirupati on Friday. It comes under the Andhra Pradesh government's initiative to promote brand images for cities depending on the tourism potential to hold events. Many eminent personalities like Mr Ravi Shankar (Art of Living) and Drums Siva Mani will participate in the event will conclude on Sunday. The government has decided to make it an annual event that will help create more branding to the temple city. The government has been spending billions of rupees for the development of tourism and providing brand image to cities.
Among the different programmes to be hosted by the state will be Kakinada Beach Festival, Ananthapur's Lepakshi Festival and Nellore's Flamingo Festival.
The government has made all these events as annual feature. From this year, Tirupati's World Spiritual Festival will be made an annual fest. The government has been allocating more funds to such events now compared to what it used to give in the previous years. It spent more than Rs 3 crore this year on the Flamingo Festival in Nellore district.
This allocation this year is higher when compared to last year allocations. For the Lepakshi Utsavams in Anantapuram district, the government had spent around Rs 1.3 crore in 2017 but this year, it is said to provide Rs 2 crore for the celebrations. Apart from the celebrations they are also planning to spend Rs 5 crore on development activities. For Kakinada Beach Festival, the government around Rs 5 crore for the A.R. Rehman show at the last event.
Chittoor district collector P.S. Pradyumna said, “The government is planning to make 'World Spiritual Festival' an annual event, similar to Kakinada Beach Festival and other events in various districts. This would help the city to emerge as a new brand. This will also help in promoting tourism activity in the state. We are already having an annual event Crafts Mela, which was started last year. The mela will be organised this year too.”
