North Karnataka people’s expectations from Karjol and Nirani soar

BAGALKOT: Two MLAs from Bagalkot district — Govind Karjol and Murugesh Nirani — have bagged plum portfolios of water resources and large and medium industries, respectively, and this has led to expectations of the people in north Karnataka soar.
Both Karjol and Nirani have their residence at Mudhol, their hometown. As Mudhol assembly constituency is reserved for SC, Nirani represents Bilgi constituency.
Karjol has tasks cut to for him. The issue of raising the height of Almatti dam to 524.265m and bringing 13 lakh hectares under irrigation by storing Karnataka’s share of Krishna water has been hanging in balance since a decade. The verdict of Brijesh Kumar Commission is yet to come out as a government notification, while the assurance of providing a Rs 10,000 crore package remains on paper. There is shortage of staff at Almatti project engineering department and rehabilitation wing. Karjol has the challenge of solving these issues.
Ensuring only money to carry out works is not enough. The rehabilitation wing does not have a full-time commissioner and managing director since last seven years. In all, there are 800 posts of special land acquisition officer, rehabilitation officers, surveyors and others. Of them, 500 are vacant. The issues of fixing uniform compensation for the land acquired and demand for fixing the market price remain unsolved even when the government has constituted a cabinet sub-committee for the purpose.
The process of acquiring one lakh hectare of land from 30 villages was stalled due to delay in fixing price. As a result, the work in Upper Krishna Project has been restricted to managing the 519.6m Almatti dam, repairing canals, managing Almatti left and right bank canals, Mulawad Lift Irrigation Scheme, Sonna, Rolli, Teggi Lift Irrigation Schemes and distribution of Marol Drip Irrigation project’s water to 6.25 hectares of land.
Thousands of people, who have sacrificed their land for the implementation of Upper Krishna Project, have not been rehabilitated. Just providing compensation and allotting a site have not helped.
The evacuees need to be suitably employed. Industries minister Nirani, who himself is an industrialist, has a role to play in creating employment opportunities in the region.
He has to identify barren land between Bagalkot and Vijayapura and facilitate setting up automobile industries and help locals get jobs.