Silvester D'Souza
Daijiworld Media Network - Kundapur (SP)

Kundapur, Mar 27: A programme to accept complaints from the members of the general public was held on Saturday March 26 at the inspection bungalow here after a gap of several years. Udupi district in-charge minister, Vinay Kumar Sorake, accepted the petitions.

The programme was scheduled to begin at 10 am on Saturday. In spite of lack of enough publicity, a number of persons with lists of their demands and complaints in hand had assembled sufficiently early and waiting for the arrival of the minister. The minister, who reached the venue about 90 minutes behind schedule, started the programme forthwith.

When one of the aggrieved persons complained that he had not received title deeds for Kumki land, the minister expressed his displeasure. MLC, Pratapchandra Shetty, supported the minister, duly observing that it was not fair on the part of the concerned to show partiality in issuing Kumki title deeds. He accused the tahsildar of giving evasive replies on this issue since the last three years. When the tahsildar clarified that there is no provision under Akrama-Sakrama scheme to issue title deeds for this land, Shetty, who turned livid, wanted to know why the petition was allowed to be taken if there is no provision for the same under law.

Another petitioner, who also came up with Akrama-Sakrama problem, accused the officials of keeping his file pending. When the minister wanted to know the reason for keeping the file pending, the tahsildar said that it has not yet been placed before the committee. Pratapchandra Shetty again turned his ire at the tahsildar, observing that being the secretary of this committee, the tahsildar has not been performing duties properly. He said that it is the duty of tahsildar to place the matter before the committee, and get a decision from there to keep the matter pending rather than taking one-sided, autocratic decisions. He reminded the concerned that this is a democracy and rule of law prevails here.

On this occasion, district in-charge minister requested the media persons not to record the proceedings.

Over 250 affected people placed their petitions before the minister. Block Congress president here, Malyady Shivaram Shetty, Narayan Achar, municipal councillors, Sridhar Sheregar, Chandrashekhar Kharvi and Devaki Sannaiah, municipal chief officer, Gopalakrioshna Shetty, former talk panchayat member, Raju Poojary, and several other leaders were present.