The Punjab Youth Festival 2012 that started on August 26 throughout the province has given the grounds and sporting facilities a look of carnival. And with the start of the second phase on September 8, the festival gathered pace after a brief lull of about a day or two with the participants in the Union Council level on day seven only had 75,315 in 614 events. These participants came from 1492 Union Councils to take part in all the sporting events while the general categories like cooking, dress designing, healthy baby, naat khani, qirat, milli nagme etc have its own domain of participation under the supervision of Social Welfare and Education department.
In Lahore’s different areas a total of 1304 youngsters from 19 union councils took part in 56 events. Nashtar Town was active of all the nine towns of the provincial capital where three union councils got involved around 230 youngsters in six events like arm wrestling, cricket, bodybuilding, cricket tape ball, tug of war, volleyball and weightlifting.
Similarly, Aziz Bhatti, Data Ghanj Bax and Samanabad Towns saw more than 500 people taking part in 18 events and also saw an involvement of six Union Councils.
On the other hand activity at Wahga, Gulberg and Iqbal Town was also moderate with around 250 taking part in 18 events and here too six union councils got involved in it.
In Data Ganj Bax Town, Cricket tape ball matches were held between Union council 73 teams in which Toqeer XI beat Tiger XI by 13 runs, Hammad Khan XI defeated Najeeb XI by 8 runs, Mohib XI beat Waqas XI by 18 runs while in the semi-finals, Hammad Khan XI beat Gujjar XI by 35 runs. In Volleyball Union council 79 teams participated in and their Temple Road team defeated Kot Abdullah 2-0. In the Weightlifting competitions at Union council 77, in 65 kgs category, Mehmood Hussain won the competition ,in 75 kgs, Khalil Ahmed and in 75 + kgs, Mohammad Riaz were declared the winners. In Union council 78, 65 kgs category, Bilal won the competition. In 75 kgs, Waqas Ahmed while in 75 + kgs, Adil were the winners. In Shalimar Town, Arm Wrestling competitions were held. Union council 33’s Imran Liaqat won the competition in 70 kgs category. Umer Liaqat bagged first position in 75 kgs whereas Zeeshan Syed won the 80 kgs category. In Athletics of Union council 33, Ali Mustafa achieved first position in 100 metres race, Fazal Majeed secured second and Syed Zeeshan attained third position.
In Cricket tapeball, Union council 33’s block 1 beat block 15 by 1 run. In Tug of war: Union council 33’s team got the walkover while in Badminton, Union council 25’s block 5 defeated block 1 2-0 with a score of 11-6, 11-8. In Union council 99, Cricket tapeball macth, Shahbaz XI obtained 3 runs win over Imran XI. In Union council 126, Ali XI defeated Abu Bakr XI by 42 runs.
In Aziz Bhatti town, Union council 60, Arm Wrestling competitions were held. In 75 kgs category, Naseer Ahmed, In -70 kgs, Ayaz and in 65 kgs, Husnain Ali were declared winners. In Badminton, Adeeb Hanif beat Ajmal 2-0. Mohammad Ramzan and Abdullah outplayed Konain and Ajmal 2-0. In the Tug of War, Konain XI beat Hakeem XI while in Billiard, Julian defeated Waheed. In the Cricket tapeball matches, Hafiz XI beat Shahid XI by 11 runs.
In Iqbal Town, Union council 120’s RCC XI beat Razzaq XI by 15 runs. Union council 121’s Arslan XI beat Mirza Shahid XI by 18 runs. In Arm Wrestling, Union council 119’s Shahriar won the -70 kgs category match against Tariq Mehmood.
Meanwhile in other districts of Punjab, around 75315 from 1492 took part in 614 events. At Layyah 1784 had shown interest in 18 events with 42 UCs getting involved in the activity. The Rawalpindi Division had 192 Union Councils’ participation in 80 games and their 6983 youngsters showed their abilities in different sporting and general category events. The Rawalpindi city saw 2833 got into competitions and 82 UCs had their participation in 27 events. In chakwal, 1655 participated in eight events while 1493 took part in 27 events in Attock and Jehlum had 80 events for 102 participants from 19 UCs.
At Sargodha, over 6600 took part in 70 events and also has the participation of 161 UCs. More than 3000 alone took part in 25 events with 25 UCs showing active interest in different categories of competitions.
Gujranwala division was the most active in participation where more than 20900 youngsters excelled in 104 events. In all 387 Union Councils invited the youngsters of their localities in the second level of competitions. In Gujranwala city 155 UCs’ 6439 participants got involved in 34 events while at Sialkot 91UCs’ 9350 took part in 20 events. Similarlyu, Mandi Bahauddin and Narowal saw 1253 and 1419 participants respectively taking part in around 25 events.
At Sheikhupura, 1500 took part in 12 events and they hailed from 49 UCs while Kasur had 1273 participants from eight UCs in the same number of events. On ther other hand Faisalabad was another event that got involved in 84 events and 224 UCs got 17614 youngsters involvement in different sporting activities. The Faisalabad city and Toba Tek Singh had for than 15000’s participation in 68 events.
The participation in other districts was also quite active with Sahiwal having 4262 competing in 55 events, Multan 6588 in 57 events and Bahawalpur had 6288 in 53 competitions.
