BHOPAL: The Shivraj Singh Chouhan government in Madhya Pradesh has decided to organise general knowledge competitions on Ramcharitmanas and the winners will get an opportunity to fly to Ayodhya.
State’s culture and tourism minister Usha Thakur announced the decision while inaugurating one such competition in Mhow town of Indore district on Sunday evening.

The minister said that based on the competition, eight participants, including four students will be selected from each district of the state. The competition will focus on the Ayodhya Kand of the Hindu epic authored by Goswami Tulsidas. The dates for statewide competitions are yet to be finalised.

The competition will be held not only on state, but also on national and international level by the MP tourism and culture department. Thakur also inaugurated a picture exhibition on Ramayana’s character Shabri.

The state tourism and culture department’s decision to hold Ramayana based general knowledge competitions comes a few weeks after the state’s higher education minister announced including Applied Philosophy of Ramcharitmanas as an elective subject in the graduation first year curriculum in colleges and universities of the state under the New Education Policy. Also, first year arts students in colleges of MP will be taught the preface to Mahabharata by C Rajgopalachari in the English Foundation Course.