THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Kerala state youth festival will be held at Alappuzha in December. Education Minister Prof. C Raveendranath said that the government has decided to conduct the youth festival without any celebrations. Sports fest will be held in October at Thiruvananthapuram and science fest will be held in November at Kannur. He also added that there will be no inauguration or concluding ceremonies for all the fests.  Though an order was issued to cancel all the fests earlier, it was withdrawn later.

The minister also said that though celebrations will be avoided, students will get every opportunity to show their creative abilities.

It was decided earlier to cancel all official celebrations of the government for one year following the floods. This includes school-university festivals, IFFK and celebrations of tourism department. It was decided to donate the cost of these celebrations to the chief minister’s disaster relief fund. There were some differences of opinion among the ministers in cancelling the festivals. The decision to conduct state youth festival was taken following this.