I am honored and humbled to announce I have been elected as the new Chairperson of the Board of Trustees of the Hindu and Jain Temple of Las Vegas.  I am looking forward to working with the newly formed Executive Committee.  Our newly elected and selected Executive committee is headed by Mr. Paresh Joshi as the president. Foremost, I like to take this opportunity to thank Mrs. Neeru, Piplani former President, and Ramesh Piplani for their years of dedicated service to the community. It has been very important that we appreciate the dedication and devotions of our two absolutely wonderful priests who have performed keeping the temple going in one form or other during the most difficult period during the last two years. 

Due to a variety of reasons both Punditjee Brijesh and Punditjee Vishnu have continuously performed rituals, prayers, shevas, and pujas in and out of the temple selflessly without fail. My heart goes out to them and their families for being there for us.

There were and have been some concerns over day-to-day administration and other apprehensions impacting the mandir, however, I would like to emphasize the PAST IS BEHIND US and I would like to personally welcome the community members to the Mandir for their spiritual growth. My self, priests, all of the trustees, the Executive Committee, and very many volunteers at the temple are committed to providing the temple community exceptional religious and spiritual services. We promise to conduct the operations of the temple and run operations as a professional religious organization with a long-term strategic plan. We will continue to make the Mandir as welcoming to everyone as best as we can. Mandir is not the place to divide our community between the haves and have nots. We will treat every person as properly with the utmost respect as possible. We will attempt to keep our ego and feeling of high status behind us and be extremely humble in the Mandir.

We have created a reasonable operating budget for the period of July 1, 2021, through June 30, 2022. We are going to attempt to bring back the income and expenses in line to break even or create a small operating surplus. But, without your help, we will not be able to achieve the break-even status. We will bring more transparency to our financial operations and promises to give you receipts for your donations during the early part of the calendar year. Our properly selected treasurer Dr. Nutan Parikh, a long-time trustee, and his assistant Mrs. Sharvari Gandhi, C.P.A. will be working tirelessly to achieve financial self-sufficiency and transparency to the temple.

Mr. Paresh Joshi, our president, and Mr. Sumair Daswani our vice president have been working tirelessly during the last 4 months together with the help of Mr. Ashok Sarkar, our secretary. They have already managed several successful puja programs in the temple as well as the play Ramlila, Dusshera get-to-gather, and others. They have plans to have year-round Indian events – national as well as regional and, planning to bring back an annual fundraiser with cultural entertainment along with recognizing many of the donors and the volunteers.  The executive committee is going to continue creating volunteer groups from diverse Indian community for maintenance, fundraising, cooking,       event planning, and more for the benefit of the community.

The board of Trustees has revised the temple bylaws extensively and completely. During the Board meeting, those revised bylaws were voted unanimously. That kind of work of revision and implementation brought the operation of the temple current now.  We will continue providing you the monthly newsletter publishing news on the past and upcoming events, volunteer news, and financial reports

With the new management team on board, I will do my best to meet the challenges and execute my responsibilities as the incoming Chair of the Board of Trustees. I assure the community members that I will be committed with new vigor to pursue the Hinduism ideals of service before self.  I want you to feel welcome to the mandir and hope you will become an active participant in the mandir.

I am eagerly waiting to personally welcome all of the attendees and bring back the glory days of our beautiful mandir. Covid’s impact on us has been severe but we are determined to go past it soon.

I am open to suggestions and constructive criticism to improve the operations of our picturesque mandir.  Please do not hesitate to contact me jagmehta@aol.com .

Jagdish Mehta, Ph.D., C.F.P., CFA, IITian, is an entrepreneur, financial consultant, and is an Adjunct Professor of Finance at the UNLV Lee College of Business. He is the president of the CFA Society of Nevada.   Professor Mehta and his wife Devyani Mehta, MD has resided in Las Vegas since 1990.

The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the above article solely belong to Prof. Jagdish Mehta, the newly elected Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Hindu Temple, and are not an endorsement by vegasdesi.com. The editor is pleased to provide vegasdesi.com as a platform for the community members to engage in intellectual debates, opinions, and discussions.

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