Daily Times

LAHORE: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will inaugurate the three-day Benazir Literary Festival on Monday at Alhamra.

The festival is being organised by the Benazir Literary Society, a newly registered civil society organization, which has raked in Rs 1.5 million funds for the event. Among the organisers are main office-bearers of the party’s Lahore chapter and a majority of the party’s activists belonging to People’s Students Federation (PSF). PPP General Secretary Zohaib Butt and Information Secretary Moazam Bhatti are president and vice president of the BLS, respectively.

Representatives of the BLS unveiled the three-day schedule of the festival at the Lahore Press Club (LPC) on Friday. Several prominent figures of the country like Asma Jahangir, Sherry Rehman, Victoria Schofield, Hassan Jaffar Zaidi, Dr Nafisa Shah, Fehmida Riaz, Anjum Saleemi, Nazir Qaiser, Qaim Naqvi, Khalid Javed Jan, Abbas Tabish, Sardaar Shaah, Aslam Tariq, Dr Ibrar Ahmad, and Yousuf Hussain, Masoor Akhtar, Saba Hameed, Hafeez Tahir, Shahid Mehmood Nadeem, Dr Jaffar Ahmad, Yusaf Hassan, Dr Alam Khan and Hussain Majrooh will participate in the cultural-cum-political gathering.

On the last day of the festival, dance and musical performances will also be arranged. Talking to Daily Times, BLS President said that the festival aimed at highlighting the linkage between literature, art, culture and politics. Raheel Cheema, the general secretary of the Benazir Literary Society, said that politics was an active ingredient of people’s daily life, and there should be a venue to discuss it and question it through creative means. He added that political dialogue was pivotal to the development of a progressive and democratic society. Both the PPP activists expressed hope to make the festival an annual event of the Lahore’s cultural calendar.