Kannada Sanghatanegala Okkoota, a congregation of various organisations has announced that it will hold a protest rally in Goa on December 9, seeking an early resolution to the Mahadayi Water dispute.
Speaking to presspersons here on Monday, Okkoota president and former MLC Vatal Nagaraj said members of the organisations would enter Goa from Karwar and then organise the rally. As elected representatives have failed to take up the issue seriously and political parties are vying with each other to garner political mileage out of it, it is time the people and organisations took it up, he said.
Mr. Nagaraj said almost all elected representatives, including legislators and parliamentarians, had given up on the Mahadayi issue. The parliamentarians have failed to raise the issue in the parliament and pressurise the Union government to find ways to resolve this issue amicably. In the State too, the government has not shown any desired amount of interest to resolve this issue. If the State government was serious about the issue, it should have convened a special session of the legislature to debate on it, he said.
‘Namesake’ session
About the legislative session at Belagavi, Mr. Nagaraj called it a ‘namesake’ session that is being conducted without a definite agenda. The government should have fixed the Mahadayi issue as the main agenda to be discussed at the session. But it deliberately did not do so.
However, the organisations would watch the proceedings of the session. They would hold protests to reprimand the legislators on November 22 in Belagavi in case they fail to debate on the Mahadayi and other issues concerning North Karnataka, he said.