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Karnataka Today newsletter: 1,147 grievances heard at CM Siddaramaiah’s Janata Darshana, and more

Hundreds of people from across Karnataka thronged the Chief Minister’s residential office ‘Krishna’ in Bengaluru with their grievances on November 27, as the first full-fledged Janata Darshana of the second tenure of Siddaramaiah got underway.

Employment, land issues, financial assistance for health, housing and pending government compensations were among the many issues that people brought to the notice of Mr. Siddaramaiah. By 1 p.m., a total of 1,147 requests and grievances had been received, of which 20 cases were resolved on the spot while the remaining 1,127 will be addressed in a specific timeline.

Shivamogga district has begun to face the impact of deficit rains this year with Sorab taluk relying on tankers for the supply of drinking water. Residents of two wards in the taluk are getting drinking water through tankers, said Madhu Bangarappa, Minister for School Education and Literacy.

Mr. Bangarappa, who is also the minister in-charge of the district, visited the drought-hit areas and assessed the impact of the drought as per the CM’s instructions. “According to our estimates, 238 villages in Shivamogga district are expected to face problems with regard to drinking water supply in the future,” he said.

The Mangaluru City Corporation will install two 60 HP pump-sets at its Pachchanadi Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) to pump secondary treated sewage downstream the Maravoor Vented Dam built across Phalguni (Gurupura) river. Mangaluru Mayor Sudheer Shetty Kannur said the MCC has already laid a pipeline to discharge treated sewage downstream.

However, the sewage was not flowing through the pipeline by gravity and hence MCC decided to construct a pump-house to discharge about 2.5 million litres per day (MLD) of treated sewage into the river. Once the pumps are commissioned, there would be no complaint of the treated sewage joining the vented dam, a source of drinking water for many villages around Mangaluru.

A nursery school belonging to the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) in Cooke Town collapsed and three vehicles parked adjacent to the building were damaged in the early hours of November 27. As the incident occurred in the early hours, no one was present in the school, residents said.