Kota Srinivas Poojary, MLC and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader, has urged Minister for Mines and Geology Vinay Kulkarni to solve the confusion on sand extraction in Udupi district.
In a press release issued here on Wednesday, Mr. Poojary said that he had met Mr. Kulkarni in Bengaluru and informed him that there was hardly any sand extraction from the sand bars in the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) areas in Udupi district.
The Public Works Department (PWD), which had to take up sand extraction works in the sand blocks in the non-CRZ areas, too had failed to issue tenders properly.
The lack of sand has affected construction and development activities in Udupi district. There was no sand available for the development of roads in the district. Sand was now being sold on the black market. The money given by the government for the poor to construct houses was not enough to get even a truck-load of sand.
In spite of the members of BJP members staging a dharna in front of the Deputy Commissioner’s Office in Udupi on March 16, the problem has not been resolved. Hence, the government should intervene and solve this problem.
If the same situation continued, the BJP would be left with no other alternative but to launch an agitation against the sand problem in the district, he said.
Mr. Kulkarni, who accepted the memorandum from Mr. Poojary, informed him that he had already directed the officials concerned to solve the problem immediately, the release added.
