The former Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar and Member of Parliament from Dharwad Pralhad Joshi on Monday warned the State government of they launching an agitation if it failed to immediately take steps to float tenders for works sanctioned under Central Road Fund (CRF).
They were addressing a gathering at Girani Chawl on Karwar Road here on Monday after participating in a bhoomi puja for work on widening the two-lane Ankola-Gooty National Highway (63) from 128.850 km to 142.750 km into a four-lane road at a cost of ₹ 109 crore.
Both Mr. Shettar and Mr. Joshi pointed out that although it was the responsibility of the State government to provide funds for development of roads passing through the city, they had convinced the Union government to sanction funds under the Central Road Fund for the road widening project under which the road would be developed into a concrete one.
However, instead of taking steps for floating tenders for the execution of sanctioned work, Minister for Public Works H.D. Revanna had issued an order recently stopping all works under the Central Road Fund, Mr. Shettar said and added that the coalition government was meeting out injustice to North Karnataka as several works had been sanctioned for the region following efforts by MPs such as Mr. Joshi from the region.
Mr. Shettar said that the coalition government was going to the extent of finding faults with even sanctioned works under Central Road Fund to delay project execution.
Mr. Joshi said that Union Minister Nitin Gadkari had sanctioned road development works worth ₹ 543 crore under Central Road Fund in HDMC limits and instead of ensuring early project execution, the State government was delaying them.
Mr. Joshi and Mr. Shettar announced that if the State government failed to take steps to execute the sanctioned works under Central Road Fund in the next few days, they would be forced to launch a padayatra from Hubballi to Dharwad seeking necessary steps.
Mayor Sudheer Saraf, Deputy Mayor Menaka Hurali, former MLAs Ashok Katwe and Veerabhadrappa Halaharavi and others were present.
Later, speaking to presspersons, Mr. Joshi and Mr. Shettar said that they would make efforts to ensure that the felling of trees for the widening project would be minimised. “We will also ask officials to look at the possibility of translocation of trees,” they said.