Daijiworld Media Network - Belagavi (SP)

Belagavi, Dec 22: MLAs from three districts of Karnataka located on the coast are up in arms against the government as they were neither given opportunity to discuss the issues of sand and problems created by the forest department in coastal Karnataka, nor a separate meeting in the presence of officials concerned was convened. These MLAs are said to be actively considering the desirability of holding protest in front of Gandhiji's statue at Vidhana Soudha during the next week.

These legislators had approached the assembly speaker with a request to allow them to highlight the grave problems that are playing havoc with the lives of common people in these three districts. Even though the speaker had agreed to their demand, detailed discussions did not take place. In spite of the fact that mention about sand and forest department issues were mentioned, integrated discussions did not take place.

During his visit sometime back, chief minister Kumaraswamy had assured at Udupi that all the problems relating to sand shortage would be sorted out by October 15 but the problem persists. He promised during the session to hold meeting of deputy commissioners of the districts, but the meeting has been postponed. The government does not seem to be having the will power to mitigate the problems nor are the officials heeding to the instructions given by the government. Karkala MLA, V Sunil Kumar, accused the government of postponing the meeting of officials unnecessarily.

After the assembly session was adjourned sine die on Friday most of the BJP MLAs from Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts came together in the office of the opposition chief whip, V Sunil Kumar, and discussed about the ways and means to carry on struggle to compel the government to address the problems. Udupi MLA, K Raghupati Bhat, Kaup MLA, Lalaji R Mendon, Mangaluru south MLA, Vedavyas Kamath, Mangaluru north MLA, Dr Bharath Shetty, Beltangady MLA, Harish Poonja, Bantwal MLA, Rajesh Naik, Puttur MLA, Sanjeeva Matandoor, Bhatkal MLA, Sunil Naik and others participated in the meeting.

Matandoor said that he got replies to 12 among 28 questions raised, duly adding that all these answers were evasive in nature. It is clear that the officials have not undertaken any interest in solving the problems. Time was not given in the assembly session to discuss these problems too, he alleged.