Vaihshnavi Ballal wins 'Spell Bee - India Spells 2013' Season 5, Shazma Sharief runner up

Mangalore, Jan 13: Vaishnavi Ballal, Class IX student from Sharada Vidyalaya and Shazma Sharief from St Ann's High School won 'Spell Bee - India Spells 2013' Season 5.

While Vaishnavi, a class IX student emerged the champion in the city finale of Radio Mirchi and HDFC Life's 'Spell Bee - India Spells 2013' Season 5, Shazma finished the first runner-up with both earning the right to represent this coastal city in the semifinals with 68 other contestants from across India.

HDFC Life Spell Bee India Spells 2013 is the Indian counterpart of the highly acclaimed Scripps National Spelling Bee, USA. Mangalore is one of the 35 cities in which such city finales are happening over the month as part of the initial rounds of the event. The top two spellers from each city will compete with each other in the next round and 16 top scorers across India will battle it out in the grand finale in Mumbai next month.

More than 300 spelling enthusiasts from across the city participated in the 5th edition of HDFC Life Spell Bee, a remarkable surge in the number of participants. This reiterates the popularity of Spell Bee not only among school students, but parents as well.

RJ Arpith hosted the city final that was graced by Vidya Dinkar, joint secretary of Indian Social Action Forum as the chief guest for the competition and distributed prizes to winners.

In the initial phase, an on-ground exercise was conducted across 20 schools in the city where children were given spelling tests. Top 20 scorers from each school then competed in the city finals round. The culmination of Spell Bee 2013 will see grueling competition between top 16 scorers to win the title of India's spelling champion. The winner will receive Rs 2 lakh and trip to Washington DC along with a parent to witness Scripps National Spelling Bee live.

Vaishnavi, first runner-up last year, who topped the written round, received immunity and direct passage to the final round outshone the remaining nine city finalists. Sahitya, Shazma and Adarsh Shetty joined Vaishnavi in the top four. While Vaishnavi got her final round spelling right in the first go, the remaining three misspelt words given to them three times in a tense final before Shazma got her word right the third time to join Vaishnavi as the first runner up in the semi finals.