Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

As the con­tro­ver­sy con­tin­ues over the shift­ing of the Chut­ney So­ca Monarch fi­nals from San Fer­nan­do to Port-of-Spain, pro­mot­er George Singh is of­fer­ing 1,000 free tick­ets to San Fer­nan­di­ans to at­tend the event on Feb­ru­ary 11. "This is our gift to you, the peo­ple of San Fer­nan­do. We want you to sup­port us in Port-of-Spain. On Sat­ur­day Feb­ru­ary 11, we will make San Fer­nan­do proud and we want you to be there," Singh said at a news con­fer­ence in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day. Tick­et dis­tri­b­u­tion will take place from Jan­u­ary 31 at the In­de­pen­dence Av­enue, San Fer­nan­do, of­fice of Southex Pro­mo­tions on a first-come, first-served ba­sis. There will be a lim­it of two tick­ets a house­hold and proof of ad­dress will be re­quired.

In ad­di­tion, trans­porta­tion from San Fer­nan­do to the show at the Queen's Park Oval will be pro­vid­ed by the Pub­lic Ser­vice Trans­port Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) through a park-and-ride sys­tem. Dur­ing the news con­fer­ence, Singh an­nounced the names of the 15 fi­nal­ists se­lect­ed af­ter last Sat­ur­day's semi­fi­nals at the Rien­zi Com­plex, Cou­va. Three more fi­nal­ists will be named on Jan­u­ary 29, fol­low­ing the George­town, Guyana, leg of the com­pe­ti­tion. Singh said three more fi­nal­ists have been added to the line-up to en­sure none felt dis­placed by the three con­tes­tants from Guyana who will have au­to­mat­ic en­try in­to the com­pe­ti­tion. They will all come up against reign­ing monarch Rik­ki Jai.

Com­ment­ing on the re­lo­ca­tion of the show, Singh em­pha­sised that the fi­nals had out­grown Skin­ner Park and Port-of-Spain will be its per­ma­nent home. Singh al­so an­nounced that crossover artiste, Ravi B, who did not en­ter the com­pe­ti­tion this year, would be among en­ter­tain­ers per­form­ing at the fi­nals. Al­so in the line-up of guest artistes are De­stra and At­lantic, Anil Bheem, Stal­in, El­la An­dall, JW and Blaze, Ker­wyn du Bois, Sat­nar­ine Ra­goo, Savi­ta Singh, Shiv Shak­ti Dancers and Pre­mala Dance Acad­e­my.

The fi­nal­ists to chal­lenge reign­ing Chut­ney So­ca Monarch Rik­ki Jai are:

Heer­alal Ram­par­tap;

Resh­ma Ram­lal;

Adesh Sama­roo;

Rag­ga (NY);

Ar­ti Butkoon;

Oma­dath Ma­haraj;

Ken­neth Su­per­sad;

So­ca Elvis;

Nigel Sal­ick­ram;

KI Per­sad;

Rick Ra­moutar

Hunter (Lalchan Bab­wah);

Sal­ly Sagram; and

b Mo­bile Wild Card -Sassy Ra­moutar (NY).