Punjab, who won 5-1, will take on Uttar Pradesh `B' in the final, to be played tomorrow. Uttar Pradesh defeated the lone northeastern team in the fray, Manipur 6-1.

Punjab lads displayed good game plan, great opportunism and excellent finish to catch the normally fleet-footed Orissa boys on the wrong foot. Orissa, too, had their chances coming but more often than not muffed with erratic shooting. Besides, Punjab's Mandeep Singh did a wonderful job under the bar to keep Orissa forwards at bay.

However, it was Orissa who shot into lead in the 18th minute. Ismail Toppo had replaced centre-forward Marcus Tirkey just a few minutes before. Soon after he took control of the proceedings and made most of a melee to sound the boad with a crisp shot.

Punjab toyed with their opponents forr a while before settling down and found the equaliser in the 24th minute when Gurbaj Singh struck. Nothing much happened after that but on resumption Punjab swarmed the rival defence and met with success immediately.

In the 36th minute Gurbaj again put Punjab in lead. But they had to wait for quite a while before consolidating further with Jatinder Singh hitting the target. Gurbaj, who completed the tally with two more goals, was, however, unlucky to miss a well-deserved hat-trick.

In the other semi-final, Manipur were no match for the Uttar Padesh lads. UP dominated the game for the entire duration with Manipur boys shining in patches. UP should have, in fact, added at least couple of more to their tally, particulaly when the Manipur defence had left a lot of holes to exploit.

UP converted their first penalty corner through Shams Alam in the fifth minute to go 1-0 up. Then it was left to Jagdesh Yadav, whose powerful shot brooked no challenge even as goalkeeper Suraj Kanta Singh made a valiant effort to put it out of harm's wary. Prem Kumar made it 3-0 as they consolidated their position by breather.

On return, Manipur seemed making an all out effort to reduce the margin. This paid dividends instantly as their aggressive game enabled them pull one back through M Chittaranjan. But after that goal, Manipur failed to keep pace with their opponents and let some easy chances go abegging. But UP did not seem to relent and mounted further pressure. This had the desired results as Mohd. Hanif's strike was perfect in the 51st minute. Three minutes later Mahadev Nath sealed Manipur's fate with his powerful shot.