|
NEW DELHI: Renowned author Gopichand Narang has expressed
the hope that DD Urdu, launched on Independence Day last year,
will soon become a 24-hour channel.
Addressing renowned poets and others assembled in the new
DD studios in Delhi for the ‘Kul Hind Mushaira’
which was then telecast live on the DD Urdu channel, Narang
said the channel was a fitting tribute to the nation’s
secularist ideals. He said while Urdu binds people who speak
different languages, the country’s plurality shows in
the fact that it has the largest number of languages for any
single country in the world.
Prasar Bharati Chief Executive Officer BS Lalli said Urdu was
a language of the nation, since it had its origins in this country
and had flowered into one of the world’s richest languages
in India. He said improving the channel and turning it into
a round-the-clock channel was the first item on his priority
list.
The channel presently telecast a fresh band from 1700 hrs to
2300 hrs, repeating these programmes in the bands from 7 am
to 12:30 pm and then from 1 pm to 3:30 hrs every day.
A large number of renowned poets took part in the Poetry Symposium
that followed, holding an invited audience of around 200 enthralled.
These included Dr Bashir Badr, Bekal Utsahi, Saghar Khayyami,
Nida Fazli, Hassan Kamal, Rahat Indori, Popular Meeruti, Munnawar
Rana, Ms Mumtaz Naseem, Adil Lakhnawi, Sardar Panchhi, Ajmal
Sultanpuri, Krishna Kumar Toor, Pritipal Singh Betaab, Noorjehan
Sarwar, Shin Lal Nizam, and Malik Manzoor who also conducted
the Symposium.
Though initially slated for just around two hours, the live
telecast went on for more than three hours with the audience
urging the poets to recite poetical recitations at their request. |
