Odisha Tourism Minister, Mayor award winners of Street Vendors’ Uniform Design Contest

Bhubaneswar: The winners of Bhubaneswar Street Vendors Uniform Design Competition were awarded the prizes by Shri Ashok Chandra Panda, Hon’ble Minister for Tourism and Culture and Mayor Ananta Narayan Jena at the Corporation meeting of Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC), today. Family members and associate of the three winners Proshish Golyan, Shamik Sarkar and Swagat Suvankar received the prize money cheque of Rs 50,000/-, Rs 30,000/- and Rs 20,000/- as first, second and third prize, respectively.

While, the first prize in the competition has been won by Proshish Golyan, an advertising and communication professional based in Bhubaneswar, the second prize was bagged by Shamik Sarkar, a student of School of Planning and Architecture (SPA), New Delhi, who had prepared the design with his SPA, Delhi batch mate Asesh Sarkar. Bhubaneswar lad and a first year student at NIFT Mumbai, Swagat Suvankar, bagged the third prize in the competition.

Among others, MLA Bhubaneswar (North) Priyadarshi Mishra, Deputy Mayor K Shanti, BMC Commissioner Dr. Krishan Kumar, Additional Commissioner Mansi Nimbhal along with councillors of all words and senior officials of BMC and other departments of the State Government were present.

It may be noted here that the Street Vendor Uniform Design Competition was launched as an initiative of BMC, as part of Street Vendor Rehabilitation Project. The competition invited design ideas from the citizens as well as professionals regarding the street vendor uniform providing them an opportunity to be part of Smart City development process. The uniforms were intended to be worn by all the registered street vendors to bring uniformity and regulation in street vending. BMC had invited submission of design entries in association with Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited (BSCL) on February 10th, this year and the closing date for submission of entries was April 15th.

Once all the entries were collated after the final submission date, codes were allotted to each design entry in order to make the marking and evaluation completely fair and without any bias. The first round of evaluation was a selection round wherein 42 design entries out of the total 87 entries received as part of the competition got selected for the final evaluation round. The second round of evaluation of the selected 42 entries was based on various evaluation parameters such as design, concept and elements. An evaluation panel constituted by Director, NIFT Bhubaneswar on request from BMC evaluated the entries and adjudged the winners.

Interestingly, Bhubaneswar was perhaps the foremost city of the country to adopt an organised vending zone concept, which helped in providing a beautiful ambiance for the city. Though designer uniforms, it was envisioned to enable the street vendors put up a smart show, both in their businesses as well as making the streets colourful.

The competition was promoted extensively online through social media platforms Facebook and Twitter along with offline promotions through presentation sessions and workshops at various colleges and institutions in Bhubaneswar. Besides, competition poster was displayed on Smartnet website managed by National Institute of Urban Affairs and emails on the competition were also shared with over 30 leading design and fashion design institutes across India for optimizing participation. Also, a special interactive session was also conducted with around 40 street vendors in Saheed Nagar area to understand their requirements.

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