Mangalore dasara begins with fanfare

Mangalore, Sep 30 (UNI) The nine-day Navarathy Utsav at the famous Sri Kudroli Gokarnanatha temple got off to a colourful start here today.

Inaugurating the utsav, Union Power minister Suashilkumar Shinde said the power shortage in country would be a thing of the past as and every household in the country would be provided with sufficient power by 2012.

He said that to fulfill this commitment, the government had planned to produce 90,000 MW power during 11th plan period as against the 15,000 MW produced all these plan period.

At present the total power production in the country was at 56000 MW. In this view, the centre has also made to understand every state government to take up install more power generation units in their respective state to cope up with the situation, he said.

Mr. Shinde while referring to the remarkable contributions made by Bramhashree Narayana Guru for eradication of social evils with his noble preachings 'One caste, One God and One religion', regretted that despite this preachings today the society was witnessing attacks on people of other religion. Such heinous acts should be shunned and discouraged. There should not fear among any individual as everyone was belong to this universe and the country, he said.

Recalling contributions made by great saints, he said that Basavanna from Karnataka in 13th century who fought against untouchability and social discrimination had arranged inter-caste marriage for the first time in the country amidst stiff opposition from the upper caste.

Similarly, Sri Narayana Guru, great saints like Sant Namadev and Sant Eknath rook initiative for the eradication of evil systems existed in the society in those days, he added.

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