SURREY’S Lakshmi Narayan Temple’s election are scheduled for October 5 and the slate led by Amrit Lal Arora, who has served as president three times in the past, is appealing to members to look at the recent happenings at the temple before casting their vote.

This is their opinion (they also sent this newspaper a copy of the B.C. Supreme Court judgment of the defamation case mentioned here) and The VOICE does not endorse any slate:

IN the AGM held by the present management on February 5, 2012, the life membership of more than 400 members of the Society was cancelled.

Some members of the executive committee, who principally disagreed with the decision, were removed from the management team due to personal differences. Among them are Mr. Narinder Singla, Chair of the Council, Mr. Kidar Joshi, Secretary of the Council, and Mrs. Karuna Joshi, the Vice President. These three members each have over 25 years of experience serving the temple and have devoted a great deal of time and money to the Society. Karuna Joshi was also one of the original seven guarantors who personally guaranteed the loan for the construction of the temple in 2000.

After having exhausted all democratic procedures, the petitioners were forced to go to the courts in order to restore over 400 life members, using their personal funds to finance the costs. On February 12, 2014 the courts agreed with the petitioners and reinstated the life membership of these members.

A defamation case filed by Satish Kumar, Mahesh Gupta and Parshotam Goel against Karuna Joshi was dismissed by the court on June 13, 2014. The result of this was the Temple was forced to pay $20,000 in Mrs. Joshi’s legal fees in addition to the legal fees already spent by the Society.

On July 24, 2014 the Supreme Court of BC rejected 279 new members made by the current management, due to lack of documentary evidence of their membership. By our count we estimate the Temple has spent over $100,000 on questionable litigation, those funds are donations by the public and should have been used to improve the Society.

Our future plans are:

* Regain the trust of our members and the general public.

* To be inclusive and welcoming of different opinions in the Temple’s Management.

* To establish a library stocked with our scriptures.

* To establish Vedic Hindi School and a Hindi newspaper

* To maintain the sanctity and spirituality of the temple, we will focus on the all-round progress of the temple.

You can contact Amrit Lal Arora at 604-724-8600 or Krishan Bector at 604-590-1923 for further details or clarification.