Mangaluru : DK District in-charge Minister Dinesh Gundurao hoisted the tri-colour and received the guard of honour on the occasion of Kannada Rajyotsava celebrations at the Nehru Maidan in the city on November 1, Wednesday

In his address, Minister said people from Dakshina Kannada have contributed immensely to the development and growth of the State. The district’s contribution to richness of Kannada and its literature is immeasurable.

“We (the district) are proud inheritors of the rich culture of co-existence of different communities and cultures. We cannot allow this unity in diversity feature of the region to fall off. It is our responsibility to retain our culture and further strengthen this unique culture,” he said.

The differences among caste and communities should be kept aside and people should work together for development of the district and the State. The work of development of Kannada should go hand-in-hand with development of Tulu, Konkanim and Beary languages, he said.

The Siddaramaiah government has already implemented four of the five guarantees in the last four months. As many as 3.44 lakh women of the district are beneficiaries of the Gruhalakshmi scheme under which each woman head of the family is getting ₹2,000 per month. The government is correcting the technical glitches and reaching out to more women.

The Minister said 2.48 lakh people of Dakshina Kannada are beneficiaries of the Anna Bhagya scheme. So far, a total of Rs.17.3 crore has been transferred to the accounts of beneficiaries as against 5 kg of rice to each of the beneficiary. As many as 1.83 crore women from the district have so far travelled for free in the KSRTC buses as part of the Shakti scheme.

Mr. Rao said of the seven multi-village drinking water schemes, work has been completed in Kinnigoli, Maravoor, Karopady, Sangabettu, Mani Sarapady, and Narikombu villages. Of the six new schemes taken up in 2021-22, work related to Moodbidri and Ulaibettu have been completed.

All the 458 drinking water projects taken up as batch one of the Jal Jeevan Mission in 2020-21 have been completed, while 29 of the 134 projects taken up as batch 2 of the mission in 2021-22 have been completed. Only eight of the 108 water projects taken up as batch 3 of the mission in 2022-23 have been completed so far.

Under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, job cards have been issued to 1.62 lakh families for 2023-24. The district has set a target of creating 17 lakh man days of work for 2023-24. Till September 2023 it has created 7.58 lakh man days of work and spent ₹41.29 crore.

Earlier, the Minister hoisted the national flag and received the guard of honour from 13 teams of city police, district police, fire, and Home Guards. He gave away district awards to 46 individuals and 17 organisations. Appointment orders were symbolically given to a few of the 445 pourakarmikas. Similarly identity cards were given away symbolically to a few of the 66 pushcart street vendors in the city.

Speaker U T Khader, MP Nalin Kumar Kateel, Mayor Sudhir Shetty Kannur, Deputy Commissioner Mullai Muhilan, MLA Vedavyas Kamath, City Police Commissioner Anupam Agarwal, SP Rishyanth, ZP CEO Dr Anand and others were present.