Karnataka - Belgaum   

Infrastructure to get a boost

S. Rajendran and Vijaykumar Patil

Several North Karnataka districts will gain much from Belgaum legislature session

S. Rajendran

and Vijaykumar Patil

Belgaum: Several districts in North Karnataka and the cities of Belgaum, Dharwad and Hubli have gained much from the five-day special session of the legislature that ended in Belgaum on Friday.

Sources in the State Government told The Hindu here that the total investment by the Government in this region was expected to cross Rs. 600 crore to begin with, mainly for building infrastructure. This, in turn, would attract industrial investment of over Rs. 1,000 crore, they said.

Just as Bommasandra and Electronics City (near Bangalore) was developed to compete with industrial development at Hosur in Tamil Nadu in the early 1980s, the State Government has decided to set up a Special Economic Zone and a massive industrial zone in the Belgaum region to compete with Kolhapur in Maharashtra. The jobs that will accompany investments are expected to transform the border areas in the North Karnataka region dramatically.

The session was organised as part of the Suvarna Karnataka celebrations (golden jubilee of the formation of the State).

If the coalition government led by Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy believes that it has been successful in stepping up pressure on the Union Government to implement the Mahajan Commission report on the border issue, the local people will feel at home in the State only if developmental works are sincerely implemented.

Strangely, legislators from Belgaum district were relegated to the background for the first four days of the special session, despite the fact that the special session was organised primarily to discuss regional issues. The MLAs from Belgaum district only got a chance to speak on the fourth day of the five-day session.

Sixteen of the 18 legislators from the district, despite party affiliations, are united when it comes to the development of the region. Two legislators representing the Maharashtra Ekikaran Samithi have been backing the demand for the merger of Belgaum with Maharashtra.

The 16 legislators, led by A.B. Patil told The Hindu they were extremely happy with the special session held here and hoped that the announcements made for the development of the region would be implemented.

They praised the contribution of Prabhakar Kore, MLC, who was the chief host for the session and said that but for his generosity, the Government would not have been successful in holding the session at such short notice.

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