KARACHI, Feb 8: The Hamdard Public School and the Cadet College Petaro lifted the championship and runners-up trophies respectively of the annual declamation contest held at the Habib Public School on Tuesday.

In all, 36 students from 18 schools, including six from outstations, participated in the bilingual - English and Urdu -- declamation contest titled, 'The 14th All Pakistan Invitation Inter-School Declamation Contest 2005'. The chairman of the Board of Secondary Education, Karachi, Brig (Retd) Shafiullah Qureshi, was the chief guest, who also spoke about the importance of public speaking.

The contestants chose as many as 21 serious and humorous topics, including 11 of English, to express themselves. The panel of judges comprised Asghar Mahdi Naqvi, Prof Shakil Farooqui and Muhammad Bin Ahmad.

In his address, the principal of the school, Wg-Cdr (Retd) Qazi M Saleem, said his school would continue to hold such events, ensuring participation by other schools of the country as well.

The first position in the Urdu declamation was jointly shared by Areeba Arif of Hamdard Public School and Obaid-ur-Rehman of Shaikh Zayed Public School, Rahim Yar Khan.

The second position went to Tooba Mughal of the Mama Parsi Girls School, and the third to Osama of Cadet College Petaro.

While the first position in the English contest went to Bilal Azeem of Cadet College Petaro. The second and third positions went to Sakina Shah and Sheema Hasanat of Habib Girls' School respectively.

Athar Sharif of the Hamadard Public School was given the special award.

The Hamdard Public School overall got 412 points, and the Cadet College Petaro 407 points.