The creation of 49 new taluks coming into effect from January 2018 is the fulfilment of a decades-old demand in the far-flung areas of the State which hardly ever find a resonance in the State capital. In fact, there has long been a demand for creation of 120 new taluks in addition to the existing 177, in some cases for nearly half a century.
Carving out of new taluks has been demanded on the grounds that it improves administration and ensures better connectivity to the people in the rural areas, besides enabling the public easy access to government offices. It also helps in more focused administration, given the smaller population size.
A case in point is the hiving off of H.D. Kote taluk into two and carving out Sargur out of it.
“Undivided H.D. Kote is so vast that it entailed a travel of nearly 100 km in one direction for farmers to approach the tashildar or any other revenue official. With Sargur as the new taluk and its headquarters, things will be easier for the public,” said Vivek Cariappa, a progressive farmer from Sargur.
Similar is the logic for creation of Kagwad taluk. It is around 50 km from the taluk headquarter town of Chikkodi in Belagavi district and the residents felt fit to have a separate taluk. Kagwad is within 10 km of Miraj, the Maharashtra town known for its series of hospitals and nursing homes that people consider affordable. There is hope among the people that having a new taluk would lead to development, a revenue officer said. Similar is the hope of the people of Ajjampura in Chikkamagaluru district. They expect better public transport facility and improvement of health facilities in the new taluk.
Some places — such as Nippani in Belagavi district — have taken very long to be classified as taluk centres, though they are traditionally important towns.
Nippani, for instance, is a bustling business centre whose markets attract sellers and buyers from several nearby towns, including the temple town of Kolhapur in Maharashtra.
From a town that was once famous for timber and furniture with a thriving economy, Alnavar in Dharwad district has been reduced to a struggling economy after amendments to the Forest Rights Act. But the announcement of being given the status of a taluk has given new hopes for the resident of Alnavar.
Several committees
The exercise to reorganise taluks was taken up first by Vasudeva Rao Commission set up in 1973, by T.M. Hundekar Committee in 1984, P.C. Gaddigoundar Committee in 1986, and again by M.B. Prakash Committee set up in 2007, which studied the demand and the rationale for creation of new taluks. While ensuring efficient administration to maximise development was the common undercurrent, the panels differed on the constitution or the boundaries of the taluks as evident in the reports submitted by them.
The case of Sargur
Way back in the 1960s when the Kabini reservoir was proposed, the original site of the location of the dam was Sargur. But the region was so politically powerful and commercially vibrant that the local representatives got the site of the dam moved upstream to the more sparsely populated Beechanahalli, close to the hand-post at Yerahalli.
Yet, Sargur was never the taluk headquarters while Heggadadevana Kote (H.D. Kote) was, and it was construed as an anomaly given the relative backwardness of H.D. Kote town and lack of easy access to it.
Not surprisingly, Sargur region saw a spate of protests in the past seeking a separate taluk status for Sargur, and it has now materialised and will come into being from January 2018.
There are, however, concerns that the truncated H.D. Kote as a separate taluk, devoid of Sargur, would stagnate economically and its political clout would diminish further.
(With inputs from Belagavi, Hubballi, and Hassan)
