Demand to name Mangaluru International Airport after Koti and Chennaya, the legendary heroes of the Tulu speaking region, has grown with legislators from Dakshina Kannada and Udupi meeting Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa in Bengaluru on Thursday and urging him to recommend to the Union government for the same.
The legislators, led by Kota Srinivasa Poojary, Minister in charge of Dakshina Kannada and Minister for Fisheries, Ports, Inland Water Transport and Muzari, who submitted him a memorandum, said that the State Cabinet should pass a resolution on it and recommend it to the Union government.
It said that Koti and Chennaya had fought for social reforms 500 years ago.
Legislators from Dakshina Kannada Sanjeeva Matandoor, Umanath A Kotian, Rajesh Naik U, Y. Bharat Shetty, D. Vedavyasa Kamath, Harish Poonja and legislators from Udupi V. Sunil Kumar, and K. Raghupati Bhat met the Chief Minister.
Mithun Rai, president, Dakshina Kannada Youth Congress, staged a dharna in front of Mangaluru International Airport last month pressing for the same demand.
Mr. Rai and former Congress minister K. Abhayachandra Jain have put up a flex board at the airport welcoming visitors to ‘Koti-Chennaya International Airport, Mangaluru’.
On the other hand, members of the Ullal Veerarani Abbakka Utsava Samiti demanded last month that the airport be renamed after Rani Abbakka, who fought the Portuguese 450 years ago.
According to Dinakar Ullal, councillor of Ullal civic body and member of the samiti which conducted the Abbakka Utsav before State government took it over, said that since the first utsav in 2015 resolutions have been passed in every utsav asking the government to rename the airport after Rani Abbakka.
“This name [Rani Abbakka] was proposed first even before other names, including that of the revered twins of Tulu folklore Koti Chennayya and the former Member of Parliament U. Srinivas Mallya, cropped up,” he said.
Udupi Puttige Mutt seer Sugunendra Tirtha demanded last month that the airport be named after philosophers Sankaracharya and Madhwacharya, as MadhwaSankara International Airport.
Meanwhile, a group of citizens has demanded that the airport renamed as Tulunadu airport.
The Adani Group, which had won the concession to operate, manage and develop the airport, took charge of Mangaluru airport on the midnight of October 30.
