Mangalore: The inaugural conference of the newly formed Mangalore Taluk Panchayat Presidents and Vice-Presidents Union took place at NGO Hall in city at 4 pm on Monday (today), with MLA Abhaychandra Jain (Congress Whip) in the chair.

49 GPs were represented in the meet, which demanded more powers to the basic elected bodies, certain facilities, and to arrive at a community decision on solutions to be found for their various problems.
Kota Srinivasa Poojary, MLC, inaugurated the union programme. Surendra kambli welcomed the guests, Ramachandra Kumpala (Mangalore TP Chairman), Vishwanath Poojary (CEO) and Aziz Malar (ZP member). Shahul Hameed Bajpe were present, besides Krishna Amin.

After the traditional lighting of an oil lamp, Kota MLC, Srinivasa Poojary spoke to the TP members at large and asked them to seek their rights from the government. He warned them against MLAs taking away their rights and cautioned the elected representatives of basic units, of losing their privileges carelessly and told to wake up to their new duties towards their people.

Speakers at the meeting stressed the need for the higher authorities to listen to the voices from rural areas and basic Panchayat units.