Members of the Taluk Horata Samiti and other organisations staged a dharna near the bus stand here on Friday demanding a taluk headquarters for Hebri.
The State government has announced three taluks for Udupi district — Kaup, Brahmavar and Byndoor.
The protesters staged a rasta roko for some time in support of their demand for Hebri taluk. Shops also downed their shutters.
Addressing the protesters, Prasanna Shetty, samiti leader, said that the demand for Hebri taluk was decades old. The M.B. Prakash Committee on Taluk Reorganisation had agreed with the demand for a Hebri taluk in 2012. But the government had ignored it.
People from naxalite-affected villages such as Nadpal and Meggade had to travel long distances to reach the taluk headquarters at Karkala to get their work done. Hebri as taluk headquarters would have been nearer to them.
The State government had permitted the trifurcation of Udupi taluk by creating Brahmavar and Kaup taluks from it, while it had allowed for Byndoor taluk to be created out of Kundapur. It could have allowed the creation of Hebri taluk out of the existing Karkala taluk. Though the former Chief Minister M. Veerappa Moily was from Karkala, he had done nothing to fulfil the demand for Hebri taluk.
The demand for Kaup, Brahmavar and Byndoor taluks were accepted as they were all represented by Congress MLAs whereas Hebri was in Karkala Assembly constituency and represented by a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA. Hence, it was ignored, Mr. Shetty said. Mutlupady Satish Shetty, samiti leader, said that the government’s decision to trifurcate Udupi taluk defied logic. Both Brahmavar and Kaup were located 15 kilometres from Udupi, the former in the North and the latter on the South and both were on National Highway 66 providing easy connectivity. Yet a nod was given for both to become taluk headquarters.
Though Hebri was in the interior and had villages which were comparatively backward surrounding it, and some of them were naxalite-affected, the government had not considered it, he said.
Laxmi Dayananda, samiti leader, said that the demand for Kaup taluk was a recent one and yet the government agreed to it, while ignoring the long-pending demand for Hebri taluk.
Jyoti Harish, Bhaskar Jois, Vijay Kumar Hegde and Sitanadi Vittal Shetty, samiti leaders, were present.
