Udupi: The issues of the formation of Hebri taluk and highways dominated the general body meeting of the zilla panchayat here on Friday.

Raising the issue, Jyoti Harish, member, said that it had been a pending demand of the people of Hebri and surrounding areas that Hebri should be made a taluk. The State government had earlier accepted the demand. But now it was being said that Hebri could not be made a taluk because it did not meet the government guidelines.

“But Hebri has to become a taluk. People from interior villages such as Meggadhe, Nadpal and Kudlu have to travel 18 kilometres to reach Hebri. The gram panchayats surrounding Hebri have large geographical areas,” she said.

Shilpa Nag, Assistant Commissioner, said that as per government guidelines, a new taluk should have a population of one lakh or 50 villages under it.

The proposal for Hebri taluk had only 16 villages and the population taken together stood at 46,650.

The geographical area was wide. Hence, the district administration had written to the government to consider the geographical area too as a criterion, she said.

Reshma Shetty, member, said that the Public Works Department (PWD) was not giving any information about a proposed toll gate at Belman for the Karkala-Padubidri State Highway. Tenders for the toll gate had been called, but the PWD had no knowledge about it, she said.

An officer of PWD said that the road had been constructed the under the Karnataka State Highway Improvement Project (KSHIP) and was not under its control. Hence he had no information on the toll gate, he said.

Gitanjali Suvarna, member, demanded to know if a flyover would come up at Padubidri on National Highway 66. An officer from the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) said that a ₹18-crore proposal for the construction of a flyover at Padubidri had been sent to the Regional Office.