Protests against State Govt’s VTU bifurcation plans

Belagavi was the venue for protest rallies by Kannada organisations on Sunday against Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy’s budget announcement that VTU will be bifurcated to create another technical university for South Karnataka.

Slogans were raised against the government and the protesters demanded that the decision to bifurcate VTU should be withdrawn immediately.

They walked from Kannada Sahitya Sangha to the Deputy Commissioner’s office and submitted a memorandum to the government to stall the bifurcation.

The former Mayor and Kannada activist Siddanagouda Patil announced that the agitation will be intensified till the government withdrew the decision. He said that the Congress-Janata Dal(S) alliance government had taken away the AYUSH Medicine Research Centre and KSHIP Regional Centre to South Karnataka districts from Belagavi. The Chief Minister has also failed to keep his promise of decentralising important offices and shifting some offices to Belagavi from Bengaluru, he said.

Karnataka Rakshana Vedike president Deepak Gudanatti said that his cadre will disrupt all government programmes to be conducted in Belagavi henceforth. He said that he would call for a bandh if the Chief Minister did not fulfil their demand.