This story is from December 8, 2016

Vadodara Fest a casualty with Saurabh’s fall from power

It had enthralled Barodians in January last year and kept the city abuzz with celebrities and colourful events for four consecutive days.
Vadodara Fest a casualty with Saurabh’s fall from power
Last year’s Vadodara Fest
VADODARA: It had enthralled Barodians in January last year and kept the city abuzz with celebrities and colourful events for four consecutive days.
However, VadFest — the four-day art and cultural festival — will miss its second date with the citizens. The festival that was slated to take off in January next year has been postponed till 2018.
Organizers said that they had very little time to take key decisions and retain the grandeur of the first edition.
The fall from power of Akota MLA Saurabh Patel, who as the then state tourism minister was heading the VadFest management in 2015, is the main factor behind the postponement.
The fate of VadFest that was to be a biennial event had been hanging in balance for last few months. The organizing committee led by controversial industrialist Amit Bhatnagar has called off the event as there was no option.
“During the meeting of our committee on Tuesday, we decided to postpone VadFest to 2018. There was also discussion about curtailing the four-day festival to two days but our committee was of the opinion that it won’t be good to dilute the scale of the event,” Bhatnagar told TOI.
“We didn’t have management bandwidth and time to make all the arrangements,” claimed Bhatnagar. When asked whether the state government was in favour of holding second edition of VadFest, Bhatnagar said that they didn’t approach the government for finance as the organizers hadn’t decided about how to raise the remaining funds.

Saurabh Patel’s influence having diminished after he was dropped from the ministry in the change of leadership from Anandiben Patel to Vijay Rupani , it was hard to raise money anyway.
He claimed that VadFest has already paid advance money to actor Salman Khan and saxophonist Kenny G. “They will perform in 2018 now,” Bhatnagar said.
Saurabh Patel had cleared the grant of Rs five crore as tourism minister and supported VadFest for smooth coordination at the administration level last year. Sources in the administration said that it wasn’t possible to stage such a big event without powerful backing from the top that was provided by Patel last year.
In VadFest last year, local MLAs and officials had raised issues that were brushed aside by Patel. With him not being around, it was be tough to get work done smoothly. When contacted, Saurabh Patel said, “Vadodara has successfully hosted big events like VadFest and Switch. I understand that due to lack of time the VadFest organizers had to postpone the event.” In the first edition of VadFest, Rs 26 crore were spent of which Rs 5 crore came from the government while the rest, Bhatnagar said, came from ticket sale. From Yanni to A R Rehman and Asha Bhosle, VadFest had hosted some of the biggest stars apart from staging famous plays, movies and art shows in January last year.
End of Article
FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA