Pics: Kishore Peraje
Daijiworld Media Network - Puttur (SP)
Puttur, Oct 14: A crowd of about 1,000 activists led by MPs Nalin Kumar Kateel and Shobha Karandlaje, which was protesting against the implementation of Yettinahole project aimed at satiating the needs of water-starved districts of Bengaluru Rural, Chikkaballapur and Kolar, was arrested on the night of Tuesday October 13 when the BJP padayatra reached Chowdeshwari temple in Heggade village on Hassan district's border with Dakshina Kannada. The protesters, who had planned to march to Yettinahole and hold public meeting near Sakleshpur, were thwarted from going ahead by Hassan police led by additional superintendent of police, Shobha Rani.
Shobha Rani told the MPs that the Padayatra would not be allowed to move through Hassan district and that they were being arrested as a precautionary measure. The arrests were made as a matter of formality, after which all were released. About 250 BJP activists from Hassan district, who had planned to join hands with the crowd from Dakshina Kannada district, were stopped at Donigal in Sakleshpur and arrested. Those arrested at the Hassan district border including the leaders later returned to Mangaluru.
When the police personnel moved ahead to arrest them, Nalin and Shobha got involved with verbal friction with them for sometime. The leaders wanted to know whether the policemen were armed with arrest warrants. They questioned why a protest that was peaceful was being intercepted.
BJP activists jostled with the police on this occasion for sometime. Traffic on the road went out of gear as several activists chose to squat on the road in protest against the stand of the state government. Shobha Karandlaje addressed the protesters on this occasion.
Earlier, Nalin had addressed a public meeting at Gundia on the fourth day of the Padayatra against Yettinahole project at around 6.30 pm. Addressing the people, Nalin invited all the state ministers, chief minister, and people from Kolar and other districts to personally visit Yettinahole and see for themselves that enough water was not available there. "Let them check the availability, and if they can show excess water that is enough to feed them, let them go ahead," he said. He also compared the voluntary support the protest had drawn from all walks of life, to the freedom struggle. He insisted that the Padayatra was not backed by any political motives, adding that the state would do well to invest some more funds to the already pledged Rs 13,000 crore, to lift water from Arabian sea and supply purified water to other districts.
MLC, Kota Srinivas Poojary, and MLA, S Angara, speaking on the occasion, invited the ministers from the district to take lead in holding protest against the said project. BJP district president, Pratapsimha Nayak, too spoke on the occasion. Former ministers, Nagaraja Shetty, Krishna Palemar, MLCs, Capt Ganesh Karnik and Monappa Bhandary, former MLAs, Rukmaya Poojary, Prabhakar Bangera, Padmanabha Kottary, Yogeesh Bhat and Mallika Prasad, zilla panchayat president, Asha Timmappa Gowda, vice president, Satish Kumpala, taluk panchayat president, Pulasya Rai, and others were present.
BJP district general secretary, Sanjeeva Matandoor, welcomed. Vice president, Devadas Shetty, proposed vote of thanks.