ENS

Udupi, Mar 20: The rift between two Shivalli Brahmin factions, identified by red and yellow shawls at Sri Mahalingeshwara Mahaganapathi Temple, Padubidri has been bridged by the intervention of Brahmin, Mogaveera, Bunt, GSB and Billava community leaders.

The rift had been there since 1984 and it worsened four years back with the members of the faction attending the programmes of the temple wearing the respective colour shawls.

Be it the annual `Rathothsava' or `Pallaki Utsava' or any other ritual, at each stage of the temple programmes, both the factions used to prove their supremacy.

The matter had received the media glare, reached the police station, Religious Endowment Department and even the courts.

On March 14, the two factions started fighting for their supremacy at the hoisting of the temple flag.

Fed up with the developments, Mogaveera community leaders took the initiative to put an end to the faction fight and forced both the factions to arrive at a permanent settlement. Sadashiva Padubidri, Sridhar Mendon, Kumar Kanchan, Sukumar Sriyan, Narayan and others took the initiative to bring the factions together.

At the end, it was decided to forget all the differences and work unitedly. Accordingly, vermilion colour shawls were distributed to the united members.

They hugged each other as a token of forgetting their differences.