With pressure mounting on the government to allow kambala, a stakeholders’ meeting here on Tuesday resolved to form a human chain in the city on January 27 to muster support for the demand.
Nalin Kumar Kateel, MP, who presided over the kambala stakeholders’ meeting said that the chain would be formed from Hampankatta Junction till the office of the Deputy Commissioner.
Religious and political leaders, students, farmers and people from other sectors of the society would participate in it.
The chain in the city would be a prelude to attract people for the huge protest planned in Moodbidri on January 28, he said.
Shantarama Shetty, president, Dakshina Kannada and Udupi Jodukere Kambala Samithi, said that the chain would be formed from 10 a.m.
The next day, he said that a procession along with buffaloes would be taken out from Swaraj Maidan to Kadalakere in Moodbidri to express resentment of people for not allowing kambala.
Filmmaker and director Vijaya Kumar Kodialbail said that the animal rights activists have now created such a scenario that filmmakers have been barred from showing real animals.
M.G. Hegde, an activist, said that the hidden agenda of animal rights activists to challenge kambala is attacking multi-faceted culture and propagating monoculture. There was a conspiracy behind this move to end traditions, practices and celebrations associated with farming. Pavan Kumar Shetty, an advocate arguing in favour of kambala in the Karnataka High Court, pointed out the urban rural bias in kambala not getting mass support. The voiceless farmers were unheard in metro cities like Bengaluru as nobody lobbied for them. If it would have been a ban on horse racing the same would have been heard as it involved high-profile people and there would have been a lobby to allow it.
