Kannada activists plan Karnataka shut-down on February 12

Even as the agitation against the Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal’s final award intensified in the Cauvery basin districts of Mandya and Mysore in Karnataka yesterday with students taking to the streets and elected representatives courting arrest, the Kannada organizations, which had called for a Karnataka shut-down on February 8, have decided to put it off to February 12.

Kannada protagonist and MLA Vatal Nagaraj told reporters that the Kannada organizations had decided to postpone the Karnataka shut-down to February 12 to mobilize various organizations and sections of the society to make the shut-down “very successful”.

Essential services like hospitals, medical shops, milk supplies and press vehicles will be exempted from the shut-down, he said and appealed to the people of Karnataka to support the agitation.

The Kannada organizations decision to put off the planned shut-down to February 12 came after Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy’s appeal to the sponsors to call off the February 8 shut-down in view of the prestigious Aero India 2007, which began yesterday.

Keen to avert any disruption to the air show, which has attracted hundreds of delegates from foreign countries, Kumaraswamy assured the Kannada organizations that the Government would debate the Tribunal order at the all-party meeting and take appropriate legal steps to protect the rights of Karnataka’s farmers.

Meanwhile, life came to a stand-still in Cauvery basin districts of Mandya and Mysore, where students boycotted classes and staged road and rail blockades. MLA M K Somashekar and his supporters courted arrest after staging a road blockade in Mysore. Activists halted a train plying between Mysore and Bangalore at Naguvanahalli on the outskirts of Mysore.

The highway between Mysore and Bangalore remained closed for the third day on Wednesday with farmers from Mandya blocking the road at several places.

The shut-down of Mandya called by Karnataka Rakshana Vedike elicited a good response with business and commercial establishments remaining closed throughout the district. Attendance was thin in Government offices.

The state-run road transport corporation withdrew buses from Mandya, a hot-bed for Cauvery agitation. The bus stands wore a deserted look.

Close 300 inmates of the prison in Mandya went on a fast to register their protest against the Tribunal’s decision. They abstained from the food served to them.

More than 2,000 farmers took out a protest march through the streets of Bangalore and submitted a memorandum to Governor T N Chaturvedi against the Tribunal’s order. Court proceedings were hit as most of the 16,000 lawyers of Bangalore boycotted work yesterday.