MUMBAI: ETV Marathi has announced winners of its Yuvaneta-Mahaneta contest. The event was organised as a special promotional and programming initiative around the Maharashtra elections.

The function held on 14 October at the Shivaji Park ground in Mumbai crowned Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray as the Mahaneta and Deepti Patil as the Yuvaneta.

To select the ETV Mahaneta, viewers were asked to vote for the person who they considered as a great leader and to select the Yuvaneta, the channel had conducted an essay-writing contest among youngsters on the topic "If I were to be the chief minister".

The award ceremony was followed by various entertainment shows including a talk show which saw participation of Sudhir Gadgil, Manohar Joshi and Raj Thackeray. During the chat, Raj Thackery even expressed his desire to make an animation film

ETV Marathi will telecast the event on 15 October at 7:30 pm onwards.