RANCHI: Hundreds of students from colleges across the country are in Ranchi to participate at Pantheon, the annual tech fest of Birla Institute of Technology (BIT) Mesra, which began on Friday. The first day of the three-day event saw cultural night and fun events keep the campus abuzz.Governor Droupadi Murmu, who inaugurated the fest, asked the students to contribute their part in sustainable development of society. "Environment conservation is not a political agenda but the need of the hour. We need the young minds to come forward and contribute in sustainable development of the society and spread environment awareness at the grassroots levels," Murmu said.Several events, including a panel discussion on technological innovations, CyberBridgeton, a high octane event which combined debate and aptitude along with a laser based fun activity called Techniq, Code it Blind, an innovative event where coders where blindfolded and asked to solve coding problems saw strong participation of enthusiastic computer geniuses from various colleges."We have participation from IIT Kharagpur, IIT Kanpur, KIIT Bhubaneswar and St Xavier's College Ranchi in major events. Codezilla, our online coding face-off has international participation with students from Hongkong, Bosnia and Brazil participating in the prelims," Alap Banerjee, a student member of the BIT Mesra's media team said.Budding writers had a rendezvous with Dhrupad Khurwa, the CEO of HaikuJam, an online platform for collaborative writing. Speaking at the event, Khurwa outlined his journey as an entrepreneur and how he built his writing app from the scratch. Students also interacted with Suzana Guerious, who works as a consultant on sustainable projects with UNEP Brazilian Committee, through video conferencing.A cultural event, 'Noor-e-Virasat' was organised in the evening complete with classical music performances. Adding to the charm were tribal and classical dance numbers, which saw a huge footfall of students.

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