Residents of Marne village near here staged a protest at Marne Circle demanding immediate repair to the road on Wednesday.
The road which passes through the Marne village connects it with Udupi, Manipal, and Alevoor. The road is used by high school and college going students and workers who work in garment and other small industries in Manipal. They travel by this road daily.
Besides staging a “rasta roko”, the residents and members of the Youth Sports and Cultural Association of Marne planted banana saplings in the large potholes on the road as a mark of their protest.
President of Youth Sports and Cultural Association Suresh Marne said the people of the village had been giving memoranda to various authorities for the last few years to repair the road. The last such repair of the road was done nearly 10 years ago.
Two months ago, the association had given a memorandum to the local MLA Lalaji Mendon, Deputy Commissioner, the Chief Executive Officer of the zilla panchayat, and the President of Manipura Gram Panchayat (Marne comes under Manipura Gram Panchayat) demanding immediate asphalting of the road.
“But we were told by the authorities that on account of the byelection to the Udupi-Chikmagalur Lok Sabha constituency, work cannot be taken up. Mr. Mendon had assured us to take up immediate repair of the road in a month. But the bypoll is over. Two months have gone by since the assurance, action has not been taken forcing us to protest,” Mr. Marne said.
Vasantaraya Naik, a resident, said that autorickshaw and taxi drivers refused to come to the village because of the bad road.
This was creating problems while transporting sick persons from and to the village, he said.
Another resident, Rekha said that during elections, politicians promise to repair the road. But after elections, they simply forgot it, she said.
According to Mr. Marne, there were 250 to 300 houses in the village and it had a population of nearly 1,500 people.
