Ram temple should be built at the earliest, even if legislation is required: Vijay Goel
New Delhi, Nov 2 : Joining the chorus for the construction of a Ram temple in Ayodhya, Union Minister Vijay Goel said Friday it should be done at the earliest even if a legislation is required.
Goel, the Union Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs, said a campaign, 'Ek Diya, Ram ke Naam', for the construction of the Ram temple would be launched on Saturday.
Under the campaign, BJP workers will light a lamp at their homes dedicated to Lord Ram. Goel appealed to people to light a lamp dedicated to Lord Ram this Diwali, the festival of lights.
"It is a wish of crores of people that Ram temple should be constructed. The temple should be built at the earliest through any way, be it constitutional or legislation or court or through dialogue between all the parties. The temple should be constructed," Goel told PTI.
Goel's demand for early construction of the Ram temple came just a day after his party MP Rakesh Sinha had announced that he would bring a private member's bill on this issue in Parliament's upcoming winter session.
Goel said if the opposition feels it is a political issue, they should end it by allowing the construction of the Ram temple. Goel is perhaps the first Union Minister to suggest legislative route for the construction of the temple.
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court had fixed the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid land dispute case for the first week of January 2019 before an appropriate bench, which would decide the schedule of hearing.
Following which, the Visva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) have demanded an ordinance to acquire land for the temple in Ayodhya.
Earlier on Friday, the RSS, the ideological mentor of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said Hindus were "insulted" by the apex court's observation that Ram temple is not a priority.
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Bengaluru: In a significant move towards enhancing disaster preparedness, the Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre (KSNDMC), in collaboration with UNICEF, launched the Karnataka State Disaster Risk Reduction Roadmap (KSDRR) 2025-2030 on Monday, marking the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction.
With this initiative, Karnataka has become the fifth state in India to launch the Disaster Risk Reduction Roadmap, following Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Assam, as reported by The New Indian Express.
The new roadmap is designed to mitigate the impact of natural disasters and reduce the state’s vulnerability. Over the past five years, Karnataka has suffered an estimated Rs 1 lakh crore in losses due to floods, droughts, lightning, hailstorms, fire, and other calamities. Addressing these challenges, Mullai Muhilan, Director of KSNDMC, emphasised that the goal of the KSDRR is to implement a systematic approach to preventing and managing such disasters.
“The theme on this day is ‘Fund Resilience, Not Disasters’, and that is why this roadmap is a framework of existing solutions to reduce and prevent losses by mitigating floods, drought, earthquakes, heat waves and so on,” TNIE quoted Muhilan as saying.
The KSDRR outlines a multi-phase strategy, which includes a vulnerability profile of Karnataka, highlights DRR developments, initiatives taken in the state, financial arrangements, and defines the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders as per the National Disaster Management Act, 2005.
The roles and responsibilities, work implementation in the road map are based on three major milestones divided to achieve in five years. All departments, gram panchayats have prepared disaster management plans with latest data as baseline information.
In milestone 2 for the year 2027-28, the roadmap envisions that the state has to collaborate and partner with various stake holders from local to global level. In milestone 3, for the year 2029-30, it mentions reducing infrastructure damage, human and animal deaths, casualties by 75%.
“Currently, KSNDMC has applications including Varuna Mitra, dedicated mainly to providing weather forecast to farmers across the state. Similarly, we have Megha Sandesha, a mobile app developed in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science. This app was created to mitigate urban floods and it provides information to various government bodies especially BWSSB, and others. We are still working on this app to provide information and data to BDA, GBA on the areas that might flood in the future. They can use this data before giving clearance to buildings of layouts,” explained Muhilan.
As part of the roadmap, several government departments have been directed to work towards risk identification, risk reduction, preparedness, financial protection, and resilient recovery. For instance, the Education Department will be responsible for developing school-level disaster management plan.
The roadmap also outlines a robust infrastructure for real-time disaster monitoring. Karnataka has already installed 6,500 telemetric rain gauge stations at the gram panchayat level, alongside 850 telemetric weather stations at the taluk level. Other installations include lightning and thunderstorm sensors, water level sensors in Bengaluru and surrounding cities, and seismic sensors at major dam sites.
