The National Council of Indian Culture has invited Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar to the final night of Divali Nagar while rejecting claims that its board accused the Government of victimising the organisation by withholding funding.<\/p>\n
The Trinidad Express reported that the invitation comes ahead of the nine-night celebration, which begins on Friday. The NCIC said its focus was on preparing for the festival.<\/p>\n
In a release issued the previous day, the organisation said the resignation of appointed director Dr Shane Mohammed had brought a circulating account of the funding issue to its attention. It said that account had no basis and had never represented a position expressed by the NCIC.<\/p>\n
In his resignation letter to NCIC president Surujdeo Mangaroo, Mohammed said an uncorrected public narrative suggested that the Prime Minister had stopped funding for Divali Nagar 2026. He rejected that claim as untrue.<\/p>\n
According to the Express, Mohammed was the third board member to resign in recent weeks. The report also noted the withdrawal of major corporate sponsors, including bmobile, National Flour Mills, First Citizens and Caribbean Airlines. The excerpt did not give reasons for those withdrawals.<\/p>\n
The NCIC acknowledged decades of government assistance in developing Divali Nagar. Its statement also recognised that national resources must be allocated among competing development priorities and expressed support for government allocations to village activities and other announced measures.<\/p>\n
The organisation accepted that it should have monitored the public discussion more closely and corrected the account earlier. It said it had expected the discussion to subside as preparations progressed.<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s festival carries the theme \u201cViveka: Discerning Truth in the Age of AI\u201d, examining discernment and wisdom in a changing digital environment. The NCIC will also celebrate its 40th anniversary.<\/p>\n
The reported invitation is for the celebration\u2019s closing night. The source did not confirm whether the Prime Minister had accepted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NCIC invites Prime Minister to Divali Nagar finale amid funding dispute<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6775,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trinidad-and-tobago"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}