The 87th edition of Akhila Bharata Kannada Sahitya Sammelana will be held in Mandya.
A decision in this regard was taken during a closed door meeting of the Kannada Sahitya Parishat working committee that was held at Circuit House in Haveri on Sunday. The decision was taken after voting of committee members, majority of whom are presidents of district KSP units.
In the voting, Mandya bagged 17 of the 46 votes cast.
The selection of next venue had turned out to be a hard nut for the KSP President Mahesh Joshi as more than presidents of nine district units were demanding to KSP to organize the next literary meet in their district. Of the nine Bengaluru rural, Ballari, Chikkamagalur and Mandya had aggressively campaigned for hosting rights.
Three districts in Karnataka - Bengaluru rural, Chamarajnagar and Yadgir - have not organised the event even once.
Though, as per tradition, the decision to select the next venue should have been taken on the night of second day of the event; this seemed uncertain as the State president wanted to tour all the hosting districts over the next one month to check the feasibility. However, the committee members were unrelenting and urged the President to follow the tradition and announce the venue.
The decision-making process was delayed by a day.
Speaking to media persons after the abrupt ending of the meeting on Saturday night, Joshi said the event cannot be organized in a grand manner without the co-operation of district administration and government. “In spite of Haveri being the home state of Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai there was several shortcomings, road repair works were incomplete, lodging facilities was not up to satisfactory level…. So, to avoid repeat of similar problems in the next meet, I wanted to tour all the aspiring districts and based on the facilities wanted to take a call on the next venue,” he said.