President Pranab Mukherjee to pay two-day visit to Jharkhand from January 9

NEW DELHI: President Pranab Mukherjee will be on a two-day visit to Jharkhand from January 9 during which he will address a university convocation and inaugurate the annual conference of Bengali literary personages, the first of which was presided over by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore.

Mukherjee will also inaugurate an art gallery, lay the foundation stone of a technical university and address the Diamond Jubilee Celebrations of Birla Institute of Technology at Mesra.

On January 9, the President will attend the seventh convocation of Vinoba Bhave University at Hazaribagh, besides inaugurating an art gallery at Audrey House at Ranchi, an official said. He will also lay the foundation stone of Jharkhand Technical University through video conferencing the same day.

Mukherjee will inaugurate the 88th Annual Conference of Nikhil Bharat Banga Sahitya Sammelan at Khelgaon, Hotwar and Diamond Jubilee Celebrations of Birla Institute of Technology on January 10 before returning to Delhi.

The sammelan is an annual convention of Bengali literary personages of India. The first conference (then called Prabasi Banga-Sahitya Sammelan) was held in Benares in 1922 and was presided over by Tagore.

The first sponsors were distinguished 'Bengalis living outside Bengal' ('Prabasis') like Atul Prasad Sen, Radhakamal Mukherjee, Kedar Nath Bandyopadhyay and Mahendra Chandra Roy.

Since 1922 till 1980, the conference had travelled across India to cities like Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai, Srinagar, Lucknow, Hyderabad and Guwahati.