Hubballi: Angered by the government’s move to allow the Goa team to visit Kanakumbi and the intangible outcome of the recent all-party meeting, farmers are preparing to make a success of another Bengaluru bandh on February 4 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits Karnataka and launch a fresh agitation on the Mahadayi river water issue at Freedom Park from February 1.
Several farmer leaders, who met in Hubballi on Monday, resolved to hold preliminary meetings with pro-Kannada organisations in Bengaluru on Wednesday to prepare their fresh strategy.
Contending that the project to divert the Kalasa and Banduri streams to the Malaprabha river does not require the Centre’s permission as the streams fall in Karnataka’s jurisdiction under the Inter-State River Water Dispute Act, 1956, the farmers plan to lay siege to the project site with spades and shovels and begin the work themselves. And to fund the project they plan to mobilise '20 crore by collecting '100 from each household in North Karnataka. “All six streams, including the Kalasa and Banduri in the Malaprabha river basin are solely Karnataka’s assets under the Act , which means it does not require the Centre’s permission to build barrages across them to divert the water for our needs. But the tribunal has included the streams in the Mahadayi river dispute on the plea of Goa. All parties are politicising the issue without understanding the facts. So we have no choice but to take things into our own hands. Thousands of farmers will soon visit the project site to start work on it,” warned Dr Ayyappa, p
resident of the newly floated farmers’ political outfit, Jana Samanyara Paksha, and former vice-chancellor of the Alliance University.
Farmer leader Vikas Soppin said that the farmers would also enter the poll fray in the coming elections to the state assembly to teach both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party a lesson if they failed to respond to their protests on the issue.
