Rallies, public addresses, milk abhishekas and annadanas marked the celebration of Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya’s birth anniversary across Mandya district on Saturday.
The people, cutting across religious lines, garlanded busts and statues of Sir M. Visvesvaraya throughout the district and recalled his contributions towards the development of the district.
Members of different political parties and associations visited Cauvery Park near the Deputy Commissioner’s office and garlanded the statue there. One group conducted ‘annadana’ in the town. Members of several associations performed milk abhisheka to the portrait of Visvesvaraya near Kuvempu Circle off Bengaluru-Mysuru highway in Srirangapatna.
Educational institutions, factories, sugar mills, rice mills and other productions units from across the district too remembered the ‘moderniser of Mandya’ and distributed sweets and sugarcane juice to the people.
Many projects
Sir M. Visvesvaraya, called the ‘Architect of Modern Mysore’, immensely contributed in making Mandya an agriculturally rich district by striving for the completion of Krishnaraja Sagar (KRS) reservoir.
His contribution in establishing, constructing and completing a chain of canals, a sugar mill, a hydro-electric power project near Shivanasamudra and a paper mill were immense.
500 statues
Subsequent to his foresightedness, the district, which was once heavily dry-land, turned into one of the major rice producing districts in the State. For the people here, he is none other than a visionary. This is why one can see over 500 busts and statues of Visvesvaraya across the district.