District BJP OBC Morcha holds, ‘Satyagraha’ for Permission to Extract Sand
Udupi: The district BJP OBC Morcha on Wednesday, August 30 held a ‘satyagraha’ at the Clock tower against the district administration for failing to give permission for Sand mining which is very much necessary for construction work.
Addressing the gathering Raghupathi Bhat former MLA, Udupi said that that, though the State Advisory Board had given its nod for extraction of sand in the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) areas in the district, the district administration had not issued permits to 45 traditional sand extractors.
There are about 170 traditional sand extractors, 45 of them are BJP supporters, while the rest are Congress supporters. While the permits of Congress supporters had been cleared, the permits of BJP supporters have not been cleared. They have been rejected for one or another reason, including rioting cases against them.
Now, fresh applications had been called for those 45 areas of sand blocks. The administration has received nearly 700 applications for those sand blocks. This would now force the 45 traditional sand extractors to go to court. Pramod Madhwaraj, Minister of State for Fisheries, Youth Empowerment and Sports, is not interested to start sand extraction in the district as he wants to promote m-sand.
Pramod Madhwaraj has even politicised the business by refraining from issuing permits to the applicants supporting BJP.
The regulations formulated by the district administration for issuing permits for traditional sand mining is irrelevant. The regulations don’t permit politicians, criminals, non-residents of village limits to extract sand. If the applicants have applied for the sand blocks coming under another village of which they are not the residents, then they are not allowed to extract sand.
The BJP has met the Deputy Commissioner Priyanka Mary Francis and has requested her not to fall prey to the politically motivated regulations formulated by Pramod Madhwaraj. Our delegation had given a deadline to the Deputy Commissioner to start sand extraction by August 28 and the district administration has failed to start the extraction of sand. We will start our strike from today until sand extraction is started, he added.
MLC Kota Srinivas Poojary addressing the protesters said that the Construction activities have come to a standstill from the last 1.5 years. People’s representatives are least bothered about the hurdles for development activities in the district. People who are dependent on business are struggling. The state government has utterly failed to address the problems of the common man. Ministers are issuing statements only for publicity. The state food and civil supplies minister U T Khader has been issuing statements only for the purpose of Publicity. The common people are suffering from ration card issues and he is busy giving press statements. He should take immediate measures to issue ration cards to the poor people, he added.
BJP state leader Satyajit Surathkal said that the poor people are struggling to get the land title deeds in the district. Under 94 C and 94 cc a number of applications were submitted. The revenue minister from the past two years has been saying that the problem would be solved soon, but even after two years, people are struggling. The government has totally failed to give justice to the poor people. The district in-charge minister is selling the sand extraction permits to his followers and his government is targeting the poor people. The state government is trying to introduce Malaysia Sand and M-sand for the district. We are living in the coast line and we have sufficient sand in our rivers. Before introducing the Malaysia Sand and M-sand, the government should allow our people to extract natural sand, he added.
Former MP K Jayaprakash Hegde, Former CMC President and Kiran Kumar, District BJP chief Mattar Rathanakar Hegde also spoke on the occasion.
Later protesters took out a padyatra from the Clock tower to Manipal for submitting memorandum to Deputy commissioner.
