Karnataka: Permit business travel between Mangaluru and Kasaragod, says Mangaluru MLA U T Khader

MANGALURU: Mangaluru MLA U T Khader on Wednesday demanded that Karnataka and Kerala resolve issues that are affecting commuting of people from Kasaragod to Mangaluru for their livelihood.
The Kasaragod district collector has initiated a system of issuing 28-day e-pass via the Kerala state government’s ‘covid19jagrahta’ portal for people having business links across the state border and the same should be reciprocated by DK administration from this side, he said.
Noting that many residents of Kasaragod commute daily to their workplace in Mangaluru and vice-versa, Khader said the stand district administration had taken then to seal its border with Kasaragod to contain pandemic cases from there is now irrelevant. “District is grappling with its share of Covid19 cases from people who returned to DK from states such as Maharashtra as well as the Gulf and the earlier restrictions should be removed,” he said.
Ideally, the two district administrations should have held a joint meeting to thrash out this issue and issued a common order that would have facilitated people to return to their work places in the various phases of lockdown 1.0-5.0 and now in to unlock 1.0, he said. Delay in this regard will only lead to greater confusion among the implementing authorities on the ground and this in turn could affect people who need to commute for various reasons, he said.
DK Deputy commissioner Sindhu B Rupesh told TOI that district administration has readied the SOP in this regard. “We will issue travel passes for professionals/students to commute between the two districts up to June 30 as things stand now,” she said, adding people applying for the e-pass at https://bit.ly/dkdpermit portal, should produce a letter from their employer and meet other health guidelines that the government lays down from time to time.