WORSHIPPERS WELCOME INDIAN RELIGIOUS LEADER

This article appears in today's Leicester Mercury:

Worshippers welcome Indian religious leader

Crowds gathered to welcome an Indian religious leader to Leicester for a weekend festival of worship and celebration.

His Divine Holiness Shree Dwarkeshlalji, head of the Hindu sect Pushti Marg (the Path of Grace), is in town to meet followers and lead them in prayer. He was greeted at the Sanatan Mandir, in Weymouth Street, Belgrave, yesterday, by worshippers dressed in traditional Indian dress offering garlands of flowers.

The three-day festival is to celebrate planning permission for a new temple – Shreeji Dham Haveli – and the launch of a £850,000 appeal to convert the former Royale Cars dealership building, in Melton Road.

Arvind Tanna, a director of Pushti Nidhi, the sect's UK charitable arm, said: "We are proud and blessed to receive the encouragement, support and guidance of our His Divine Holiness Shree Dwarkeshlalji.

"Pushti Marg has millions of followers throughout the world and about 1,000 here in Leicester.

"We have always dreamt of building a place of worship of our own and the dream is finally becoming a reality."

The temple will promote Pushti Marg through religious, cultural and social activities open to the whole community.

The festival concludes on Sunday. For more, e-mail: pushtinidhi@yahoo.co.uk