Belagavi winter session: A bad balance sheet on resolving regional imbalances

Belagavi: Yet another winter session of the legislature ended in Belagavi’s Suvarna Vidhana Soudha on Friday.

Like it has been in the past, this session too had raised high hopes, but delivered too little on the ground for North Karnataka (NK).

People of Kalyana Karnataka and Kittur Karnataka regions were hoping that the lawmakers would deliberate and find solutions to pressing issues on language & border disputes with Maharashtra, irrigation, drought relief, development projects, creation of jobs and improving health infrastructure in the backward region of the 14 districts.

But political observers and activists say the 10-day session failed to address the regional imbalance issues, that is giving oxygen to the demand for a separate state.

‘Big letdown’

“We were let down by the 96 MLAs from NK region. There is no need to blame the elected representatives from south Karnataka for our backwardness,” says Belagavi-based Kannada activist Ashok Chandargi. He questions the preparedness of the region’s MLAs in raising issues of NK and measures taken by them to instil confidence among residents of villages bordering Maharashtra.

“Maharashtra is providing health insurance policies for people in 865 border villages and towns in Karnataka. Neither the opposition leaders nor the government thought it fit to send a strong message to the neighbouring state from the Assembly,” he said. Chandargi said one of the major reasons for starting to hold the winter session in Belagavi in 2006-07 was to show our hold over the region.

Trust deficit

“How will you instil confidence among the people if you do not have any border area development policy,” he questioned.

There was a demand from legislators of NK to discuss issues about the backward region right from the first week of the session.

However, when the debate was initiated in the last two days, there was low attendance in both the Assembly and the Council. A total of 42 MLAs took part in the 11.5 hours of debate in the Assembly.

Debate cut short

The Council saw lesser discussion on NK as only 5.5 hours of the last day was allocated for the discussion, with 12 members giving notice to speak. Due to the chief minister’s tight schedule outside the legislature, the debate was cut short and only six members spoke on the subject.

By the own admission of Legislative Council Chairman Basavaraj Horatti, the winter session in Belagavi was an utter failure with regard to the discussion on NK.

“The MLCs toed their party lines and did not rise above petty politics for the development of the region,” he said.

‘Political mudslinging’

“I don’t understand what we achieved by holding a session at SVS by spending so much money and effort over the last 10 days as the region did not receive solutions to its problems. The political mudslinging could have taken place in Bengaluru also,” he said and added that day by day, the quality of debates in the ‘House of Elders’ is deteriorating due to backdoor entry of people with limited understanding of their responsibilities.

While leaders such as Basanagouda Patil Yatnal, Arvind Bellad and Basavaraj Rayaraddi did raise issues concerning NK, a majority of the MLAs limited their questions to know how much grants were allocated for implementation of projects in their constituencies and how many anganwadis were functioning in their taluks.

Lost opportunity

Prof Razak Ustad, Raichur-based social worker, said none of the MLAs from NK had come prepared with data, statistics, reports and solutions for the challenges faced by the region. They played to the gallery by limiting questions to their taluks.

Razak believes this was an opportunity for NK MLAs to become regional leaders by highlighting the nearly 40% vacancies of teacher posts in NK, malnutrition, farmers’ distress, incomplete irrigation projects such as Mahadayi, Upper Krishna and balancing reservoir across the Tungabhadra. 

Hanumant Yadahalli, a professor at Karnataka State Akkamahadevi Women’s University, questioned the discrimination being meted out to North Karnataka.

Emotional subjects

“While they have touched upon emotional subjects by recommending to name four airports in the state after stalwarts with caste backing, they have forgotten about the real issues. The construction of Shivamogga and Vijayapura airports were announced at the same time. While flight operations have started in Shivamogga, in Vijayapura, we are nowhere near constructing the runway.”

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, on the final day of the session, made several announcements, including formation of a high-level committee of senior officials to understand the reasons why regional imbalances continue even after spending Rs 32,433 crore over the last several years.