The Gujarat government will be organising Prakash Utsav at Statue of Unity in Narmada district to celebrate the upcoming Diwali festivities, said sources familiar with the development. The idea behind organising Prakash Utsav is to give something new to the tourists, at the site, as the influx of people is expected to surge during Diwali, said top sources. According to a senior officer, “The festivities have started. During the Diwali holidays, more people are likely to visit the Statue of Unity. So, we have decided to organise a Prakash Utsav during the holidays. The idea is to celebrate the festival of light”. The senior officer added: “We also thought about organising such an event this time because the celebrations will coincide with several important occasions such as Diwali, National Unity on October 31 and birth anniversary of tribal icon Birsa Munda on November 15. Diwali this year is falling on October 18, so we will launch this festival a few days before that. The event will be celebrated for around a month.” SoU is located in the tribal-dominated area of Narmada district. Prime Minister Narendra Modi celebrates the National Unity Day on October 31, the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, at SoU every year. According to the plan, the festival will include decoration of a one-km long stretch with lights. On the sideways, there will be food stalls offering various traditional food items from different states of India, said sources. The stretch will be open to the public till late in the night. The festival will also include cultural programmes. The officer quoted above said, “It will be a refined and advanced version of Vasant Utsav that we organise at Sanskruti Kunj in Gandhinagar every year to celebrate the arrival of spring. We will see people’s response to the Prakash Utsav this time and accordingly it will be decided if we will continue it in the coming years.” In another development, the Sardar Sarovar Dam attained its full reservoir level (FRL) of 138.68 meters on Wednesday. During the occasion, Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel visited the dam and worshipped the Narmada water while celebrating the same. At the FRL, the dam has a total water storage capacity of 9,460 million cubic meters. After its inauguration in 2017, the dam has reached its FRL on six occasions. Before 2025, it reached the FRL in 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023 and 2024. In the current year, 302 crore units of electricity have been produced at the dam’s riverbed power house and canal head power house. So far, a total of 6,810 crore units of electricity have been produced, according to an official statement. The CM was joined by local MPs, MLAs and senior officials including Chief Secretary Pankaj Joshi among others.
