Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

The Na­tion­al Coun­cil of In­di­an Cul­ture (NCIC) has re­ject­ed al­le­ga­tions that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar or her Gov­ern­ment sought to po­lit­i­cal­ly vic­timise the or­gan­i­sa­tion by with­hold­ing fund­ing for Di­vali Na­gar 2026, fol­low­ing the res­ig­na­tion of NCIC di­rec­tor Dr Shane An­tho­ny Mo­hammed.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, the NCIC said its board of di­rec­tors ac­cept­ed Mo­hammed’s res­ig­na­tion, ten­dered on Sun­day, and ex­pressed re­gret at his de­par­ture.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion de­scribed Mo­hammed as a valu­able mem­ber of the board since his ap­point­ment in April this year.

The res­ig­na­tion comes amid pub­lic dis­cus­sion sur­round­ing fund­ing for Di­vali Na­gar 2026, the an­nu­al cul­tur­al fes­ti­val which the NCIC is cur­rent­ly prepar­ing to host from Oc­to­ber 30- No­vem­ber 7.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, the board be­came aware that a nar­ra­tive had de­vel­oped in the pub­lic do­main sug­gest­ing that the Prime Min­is­ter had “pulled the plug” on fund­ing for the event.

The NCIC said it was ad­vised by Mo­hammed that the per­cep­tion should have been cor­rect­ed by the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

The coun­cil ac­knowl­edged that the is­sue had gained trac­tion and said the false per­cep­tion had re­sult­ed in al­le­ga­tions that the Prime Min­is­ter and her of­fice act­ed vin­dic­tive­ly to­ward the NCIC.

“We wish to cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly state that these al­le­ga­tions against the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter have no ba­sis,” the re­lease stat­ed.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion stressed that at no time did its board hold the view that the Prime Min­is­ter sought to vic­timise the NCIC by with­hold­ing fund­ing, nor had the coun­cil ex­pressed such a po­si­tion in any of its pub­lic state­ments.

The NCIC al­so point­ed to decades of gov­ern­ment sup­port that helped es­tab­lish Di­vali Na­gar as Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pre­mier Di­vali cel­e­bra­tion.

The coun­cil said it un­der­stood the chal­lenges in­volved in gov­ern­ing the coun­try and recog­nised that na­tion­al re­sources must be strate­gi­cal­ly al­lo­cat­ed for de­vel­op­ment pri­or­i­ties.

While main­tain­ing that the al­le­ga­tions lacked mer­it, the NCIC ad­mit­ted it could have re­spond­ed more quick­ly to emerg­ing pub­lic com­men­tary.

“It was re­miss of us to not close­ly mon­i­tor the evo­lu­tion of the mat­ter in the pub­lic do­main so that this ob­vi­ous fic­tion could be cor­rect­ed ear­li­er,” the re­lease said.

De­spite the con­tro­ver­sy, the or­gan­i­sa­tion said it re­mains fo­cused on stag­ing a suc­cess­ful Di­vali Na­gar and looks for­ward to wel­com­ing the Prime Min­is­ter to the fes­ti­val’s clos­ing night cel­e­bra­tions.

This year’s event will mark the 40th an­niver­sary of Di­vali Na­gar, one of the coun­try’s largest cul­tur­al cel­e­bra­tions.