Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa on Monday requested his Kerala counterpart Pinarayi Vijayan not to change the names of 11 villages in Kasaragod and Manjeshwara taluks in Kasaragod district, which abuts Karnataka.
“The Kerala government may not have the intention to change the names of these villages and this may have been a unilateral decision of the local bodies of these villages,” Mr. Yediyurappa said in a letter to Mr. Vijayan. “I hope you will oblige and make the Kannada-speaking people of Kasaragod and Manjeshwara happy by taking a decision to stall the process of changing the names,” he stated.
Mr. Yediyurappa said that the existing names were predominantly from Kannada and Tulu. “Some of the names of these villages have a long history of several centuries,” he said, adding that the change of names would hurt the Kannada-speaking people and destroy Kannada and Tulu culture.
Karnataka Border Area Development Authority chairman C. Somashekar had met the Chief Minister earlier to discuss the issue and urged him to take up the matter with Mr. Vijayan.
Opposing the move to rename the villages, Kannada and Culture Minister Arvind Limbavali said the government should have at least discuss the issue with the local population before making any announcement. The decision to change names of villages has also been opposed by Minister for Primary and Secondary Education S. Suresh Kumar. “The name of every village and town will have its own history,” he said.
JD(S) leader and former Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, who on Sunday expressed his opposition to the move, has also written to the Kerala Chief Minister.
