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Category: INTERVIEWS/PROFILES

Published: 16 October 2019

JAMMU: Jammu’s daughter Ravia Gupta has brought laurels to the motherland by securing second position at the national level above 18 (envelope) category in a nationwide annual letter writing competition “Dhai Akhar” organized by the Indian Postal Service Department on the theme ‘Mere Desh Ke Naam Khat’ (A Letter to my Motherland) and was awarded by Hon'ble Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister for Communications, Electronics and Information Technology and Law and Justice at a function on 15 October to mark the culmination of the National Postal Week, 2019, at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi.

Inspired by Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘Amar Desher Matti’ the Department of Posts had organised the second Dhai Akhar Letter Writing Campaign for the year 2018-19 all over the country and the letters recieved this year were over 9 lakh. A booklet of winning letters, signed by the winners would be kept at the National Philatelic Museum.

Earlier, Ravia, who teaches Journalism at Indian Institute of Mass Communication, secured the first position at the state level was awarded for the same by the Department of Posts, Jammu & Kashmir Circle, on the occasion of Jampex-2019 Philately Exhibition at Shri Guru Gobind Singh Public Higher Secondary School.

The contest which is launched by Department of Posts in 2017-18 for the commencement of 150th Birth Anniversary Celebrations of Mahatma Gandhi aims at encouraging and promoting the art of letter writing, which was once considered an important means of communication. “Writing enables one to think and remain rooted to culture and more importantly to one’s own conscious.

The sacrifices of my motherland must be several, only thing needed is an art of story-telling to keep those memories of pain and proud alive and pass them on to the younger generations for them to take inspiration and boldly face the worldly challenges,” said Ravia, who determines to promote meaningful writing among budding journalists. The first such competition was organised in 2017-18 on the subject ‘Bapu aap mujhe achche lagte hain’ (Bapu you inspired me).