Sunil Agrawal, chairman of IALA

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Los Angeles (Valley) Celebrates India Independence Day
Virtually with Enthusiasm 

\Los Angeles, Aug 15, 2020
NRIpress.club/Ramesh/ A.Gary Singh

India Association of Los Angeles, known as IALA, celebrated India Independence Day virtually on August 15th. Every year IALA organizes Grand India Fair to celebrate August 15th and bring community together, where thousands of people participate in it, and local artists perform on bigger stage. But due to Covid19 situation, this year IALA had to cancel its premium event and organized it virtually using Zoom and Facebook live.  

Program started with speech of Kumar Jawa, one of the founder of IALA. He congratulated everyone on this historical day.

	Sunil Agrawal, chairman of IALA welcomed everyone in his opening remark. He regretted that this year IALA could not organize grand fair and could not provide platform to local artists to showcase their talent. He highlighted how IALA collaborated with other organizations and distributed food, and grocery bags to the needy in Corona time.

President Ouseph Poulose said that IALA is celebrating India Day in the valley since year 2000, year after year at grand scale. He emphasized that together we will triumph the current situation and come out stronger than ever before. 

LAUSD director Scott Schmerelson congratulated everyone and said that every students in the LAUSD was supplied with an electronic device to make sure that every students keep on learning virtually. LAUSD distributed more than 54 million meals to the families of LAUSD. He appreciated IALA for working with LAUSD. 

	Chief Guest of the program, Congressman Brad Sherman in his address praised Indian Americans for their higher education and their contribution to American progress. He said that United States has more military exercise with India than any other country. US sold more than 50 Billion worth of weapons including naval drones, which was never sold to non-Nato country.

Cultural VP Manjeet Wahi lined up couple of Cultural performances. Thalam School of Fine Arts performer Haasini Meesala performed Ganesh Kavthuvam, which was choreographed by her Guru Nalini Natarajan. Pratibha Gunjal, Mauri Vasan, Ravi Arora and Ashok Kapoor sang some melodious Hindi songs to entertain the audiance. Program ended with the classical dance performed by Veda Bollapalli, Saavani Bollapalli, Nandini Iyer and Saivee Ahuja. 

Virtual Celebration was viewed all over the valley live on Facebook and were liked very much. Organizers received many thanks messages to organize virtually and entertaining them in this difficult time. 

IALA was founded by Late Inder Singh and Kumar Jawa in year 2000. IALA team consists of thirteen Board of Directors and Executive Committee. Executive Committee includes President Ouseph Polouse, Executive VP Ashok Kapur, Secretary Pramesh Shah, Join Secretary Falguniba Zala, Treasurer Sunil Prabhakar, VP Finance Sam Sidhu, VP Publicity Navdeep Singh, VP Cultural Manjeet Wahi, VP Public Relation Kanaksinh Zala, VP Youth Ramesh Bramharouthu, VP Health Dr Bama Sridhar, and 8 executive members – Hema Chopra, Jugal Kishore, Vandana Kumar, Ram Bali, Prem Seem, Hezal Shah, Yagnesh Patel, Raj Thakkar, and Atri Shukla.