Kundapur: Highway divider issue snowballs into controversy, works stalled

Silvester D'Souza
Daijworld Media Network – Kundapur (SP)

Kundapur, May 22: The issue relating to the highway dividers, which had cropped up a week back, threatened to disrupt law and order in the town on Sunday May 19, after snowballing into a bone of contention between different groups of people.

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) officials and the company which executes highway widening work chose to remove the dividers, which have been in place since the time works on the highway began. This move gave rise to protests. After members of different organizations, duly supported by locals, came together and held a protest near Surgeon Hospital on national highway 66, the work of removing the dividers was suspended.

NHAI, which seemed to have suddenly woken up to the need to remove the dividers that had been set up in front of schools and hospitals in the town, had undertaken the work of clearing the dividers last Monday. The people had resisted the move, by saying that patients, students, and auto rickshaw drivers would face lot of inconveniences if the dividers are removed. 

Although reports on these protests appeared in newspapers, none of the officials or people’s representatives paid heed to them. Perhaps buoyed by the inertia shown by them, the work of clearing the dividers began on Sunday again. The locals, who observed that machinery and equipments had been brought for removing the dividers, were compelled to come together again, and insist that the dividers should not be removed.

Engineer in charge of works, Pradeep, visited the spot. After holding discussions, it was decided that the work would be stopped temporarily. President of Vinayak Auto Rickshaw Drivers Association, Mahesh Kini, manager of Surgeon Hospital, Sridhar, taluk panchayat member, Manju Billava, and a number of citizens from the town were present during the protest. The traffic police, who were deployed to act against possible friction, worked to strike truce.  The protestors said that a memorandum against the move to clear the dividers would be handed over to the sub-divisional officer soon.

The local people suspect that unseen hands have worked  behind the scenes to bring pressure on NHAI, which seemed to be oblivious to the problems of the people, to work against the interest of the local people.  In the past, dividers had been allowed to remain even when national highway work was in progress near the hospital in Hanglur here and schools, on humanitarian grounds. However, highway work had come to a standstill since the last some months at these stretches.