Karnataka Bandh: A groundswell for Mahadayi

Belagavi: Several organisations agitating in Belagavi district as part of the state-wide bandh on Saturday, demanded the immediate holding of a special session of the state legislature to discuss the Mahadayi issue.

Even as agitators blocked national and state highways and city roads in many areas, disrupting normal life, their leaders made a fervent appeal to the government to take the issue seriously at least now.

Hitting out at legislators and ministers from north Karnataka for failing to raise the Mahadayi dispute adequately in the legislature, the activists accused leaders of politicising their very real drinking water crisis.  

With north Karnataka constantly battling water scarcity in the absence of the promised drinking water projects, they said Chief Minister Siddaramaiah should at least now hold a meeting with neighbouring states and resolve the disputes holding up many of them.  

“The state government should have worked out a strategy  to prevent the Mahadayi issue from going before a  tribunal,” asserte president of the Uttar Karnataka Vikas Vedike, Ashok Pujeri, arguing that the state would not have been deprived of its share of the Mahadayi water had it held  talks with all parties concerned to  resolve the matter.

The solution was to hold  a special session of the legislature immediately to discuss the dispute, he underlined.

Meanwhile, hundreds of protesters staging a dharna before the home of Member of Parliament, Suresh Angadi, were arrested before they could take out a mock funeral procession of the MP on Saturday to protest his absence from the district in their time of need.