Mangalore : The Stake- Holders meeting on ‘Holistic development of Tourism in Coastal region’ was held at Hotel Gateway on Dec 17, Saturday.

Participating as the tourism resource person, Union Minster for Tourism Subodh Kant Sahai who was supposed to start the discussion at 10.15 am was late for nearly two and half hours. Later speaking on the occasion, he said that the Karnataka tourism department has though of whole activity for the first time.

He also said that in Karnataka the central tourism department will add 20 more oversea offices in Karnataka, just to double the import tourism. In Goa the resort owners are selling the one room for Rs 40,000 for the tourists which are not good point of view, this will drastically reduce the number tourist coming to the tourist destination, he lamented.

He said that people visit our country to see India, not Singapore or Paris. Hence it is necessary to showcase our culture and promote tourism.

He said that the government has identified 38 destinations, which will be developed with complete infrastructure. If the tourism sector develops as planned, 30 million jobs will be generated in the field of guides, boating industry, at the end of 2020. He said that he will launch a ‘Clean India Campaign’ on December 20 headed by former president Dr APJ Abdul Kalam.

He said that Beach tourism will be first target to start at Kerala, Goa, Karwar and Karnataka. Karnataka can be a pioneer in the state. Southern State can become much better than the northern state.

He said that we must make the tourism destination so that today visitors will come to city and tomorrow tourists will come to city.

Prior to the ministers’ arrival the stake holders present at the venue started the discussion and Upendra Hosabettu raised an objection to the declaration of 329 kilometres of coasts of Karnataka as regions coming under CRZ-II.

While Mahesh Kumar, assistant director of CRZ said that there is no disturbance for water surfing and other water sports from CRZ and it will be not be prevented at all.

Eualia D’Souza said that she was participating in the meeting from 23 years and it is just a waste of time since nothing discussed gets implemented. The meeting will be held to give the documents to their superior and these filed will be gather dust at office. Later she read out the issues raised by the stake holders in front of minister. Some of the issues were like branding the tourism of the region, demarcation of special tourist zones, medical tourism, ecological tourism and need for variety in tourist destinations were discussed

Chairman of Coastal Development Authority B Nagaraj Shetty, Deputy Speaker N Yogish Bhat and state tourism principal secretary N C Muniyappa, MLA U T Khader, PV Mohan, Vivek Nair, Vishwanath Reddy, Sundar Naik, and Sanjay were present.