Shas­tri Boodan

The Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion (CBC) will host a spe­cial ple­nary ses­sion to analyse the 2025–2026 na­tion­al bud­get. May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed an­nounced the plan on Mon­day dur­ing the Di­vali Na­gar cel­e­bra­tions at the NCIC Na­gar, Ch­agua­nas, say­ing the bud­get “looks good for the CBC.”

Mo­hammed said he could not yet com­ment on the pro­posed Land­lord Tax, not­ing that the cor­po­ra­tion would await feed­back from stake­hold­ers like­ly to be af­fect­ed. How­ev­er, he wel­comed the re­duc­tion in the price of su­per gaso­line, say­ing burgess­es had al­ready ex­pressed ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the ex­pect­ed sav­ings.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the Na­gar, Mo­hammed said the world is filled with di­vi­sion, anger and pain, but in­di­vid­u­als can choose a dif­fer­ent path. “A kind word to a neigh­bour, a help­ing hand to some­one in need, a smile to some­one who has none — these are the seeds of a bet­ter world,” he said.

He de­scribed this year’s Na­gar theme, Lo­ka San­gra­ha – Wel­fare of the World, as “more than words.” Mo­hammed said, “It is a call to our hearts, a call to our hu­man­i­ty. The wel­fare of the world be­gins not in grand ges­tures, but in sim­ple acts of love, em­pa­thy, and un­der­stand­ing. Every small act is a light in the dark­ness, every mo­ment of kind­ness a step to­ward heal­ing.”

He urged peo­ple to re­flect on their be­hav­iour to­ward oth­ers. “Do not be fooled by your prayers and fast­ing. Look at how you treat oth­ers — that is the re­al re­flec­tion of your soul. For no mat­ter how of­ten we pray or how long we fast, if we can­not show kind­ness, if we can­not love one an­oth­er, we have missed the very pur­pose of faith it­self.”

Mo­hammed said he has wit­nessed the com­mu­ni­ty’s strength, re­silience and gen­eros­i­ty. “I have seen neigh­bours care for strangers, chil­dren reach out to the el­der­ly, fam­i­lies ex­tend love across di­vides. This is the true mean­ing of Di­vali, the true mean­ing of Lo­ka San­gra­ha.”