Protest staged along with progressive organisations at ZP office premises
Mysore/Mysuru: Demanding the revocation of order allotting land at Gudumadanahalli in Varuna hobli, Mysuru taluk, to build a NIMHANS-like hospital, hundreds of farmers took out a padayatra from the proposed hospital site to the Chief Minister’s Office at Zilla Panchayat (ZP) premises on Krishnaraja Boulevard in the city this morning.
The farmers who launched the padayatra under the banner of Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS) in association with Dalita Sangarsha Samiti (DSS), Parisarakkkagi Navu and various progressive organisations, at 8 am, reached the ZP Office on foot at about 11.30 am, covering a distance of 10-km.
The protest was an extension of the sit-in protest being staged at the project site for the past 12 days.
Apart from the farmers, four pairs of cattle including cows and oxen, were herded into the protest site, to explain the plight of the livestock without any gomala (grazing land), that forms the major chunk of the land at Gudumadanahalli, that has been identified to build NIMHANS-like hospital.
In its memorandum to the CM, Raitha Sangha led by its President Badagalapura Nagendra has explained that 20-acre of the total 36 acres land falling under different Sy.Nos - 8,60 and 68 has been marked for the hospital. About 80 agrarian families are involved in cultivating the land for the past 70 years. Apart from the cultivation of horticultural crops like coconut and others, the farmers have been cultivating paddy in double crop method every year. The land has abundant water source for irrigation through Varuna canal from Dalvoy Lake and the water that flows down during rain from the rivulets at Chamundi Hill. The women are involved in poultry farming and animal husbandry. While a part of the land is used to grow grass to feed about 400 cows, 300 sheep and 100 goats. Overall, it is a fertile land.
A strong contingent of Police led by DCP (Crime and Traffic) K.S. Sundar Raj was deployed at the ZP office premises.
Along with Badagalapura Nagendra, farmer leaders Hoskote Basavaraj, Hosur Kumar, P. Marankaiah, Anandur Prabhakar, Mandakalli Mahesh, T. Yashwanth of Samyukta Horata Karnataka, Prof. Kalachannegowda, DSS leader Algod Shivakumar, Savitha Mallesh and other leaders took part in the protest.
