Why in news?

The Prime Minister addressed the Manipur Sangai Festival via video message . Labelled as the grandest festival in the state, the Manipur Sangai Festival helps in promoting Manipur as a world-class tourism destination.

Highlights

• It is an annual cultural festival organised by Manipur Tourism Department every year from 21 to 30 November.
• Tourism Festival, has been renamed as the Sangai Festival to stage the uniqueness of the brow-antlered deer popularly known as the Sangai.
• Aim :

1. To promote Manipur as a world class tourism destination
2. It showcases the states contributions to art and culture, handloom, handicrafts, fine arts, indigenous sports, cuisine, music and adventure sports, as well as the natural environment

• It is celebrated in different parts mainly in the valley areas of imphal.

Sangai

• It is an endemic deer found only in Manipur
• It is also the state animal of Manipur.
• IUCN Status : Endangered
• Original natural habitat: Floating marshy grasslands of the Keibul Lamjao National Park, (southern parts of the Loktak Lake)
• Sangai finds itself embedded deep into the legends and folklore of the Meitei society

Loktak Lake

• Largest fresh water lake in the North–East India
• It is a stretch of water resembling a miniature inland sea
• Fishermen living in floating islands called Phumdis in floating huts known as Phumsangs are sights of this lake.
• It has been declared a Ramsar site

Keibul Lamjao National Park

• Only floating National Park in the world
• It is the last natural habitat of the “Sangai” ,the dancing deer of Manipur.
• National park is characterized by floating decomposed plant material locally called phumd

• Vegetation: Moist semi–evergreen forests, has a amalgam of aquatic, wetland and terrestrial ecosystem