Mangaluru : The passing away of the seer of Pejawar Adhokshaja Mutt Vishwesha Teertha has stoked a demand among train activists to rename Jokatte railway station as Pejawar. While train activists are pushing for this demand based on popular sentiment, authorities of Palakkad division of Southern Railway (SR), under whose jurisdiction Jokatte station is located, feel there is no need to rename the station and it should remain as it is.

Jokatte station is located between Mangaluru Junction and Thokur railway stations on the Mangaluru-Mumbai railway corridor under SR in Pejawar village, Malavoor gram panchayat. Renaming of the station was also the wish of Sri Vishwesha Teertha, who in February 2017 said the station should be named as Pejawar station, since it was located within the limits of Pejawar village. The station was then under construction, and got completed later.

This is not a new demand but an old one that train activists have been making ever since Palakkad division started construction of the railway station in 2016, said train activist Gopalakrishna Bhat. Dakshina Kannada MP Nalin Kumar Kateel, then Mulki-Moodbidri MLA K Abhayachandra Jain, Malavoor gram panchayat and other stakeholders too had endorsed the demand of the late seer. Despite this, SR named the station as Jokatte, he said.

Renaming the station as Pejawar Railway Station would have been an ideal tribute to the departed octogenarian seer, revered as a saint by not just his followers, but society as well, Bhat said. Malavoor GP in October 2017 had adopted a resolution that panchayat residents, gram sabhas and its members have been demanding that the new station coming up between Kenjar and Pejawar be named as Pejawar, Bhat said to further buttress his case.

Then leader of the opposition in state legislative council and minister Kota Srinivas Poojari in January 2019, in a letter to railway minister Piyush Goyal, had drawn the latter’s attention to this popular demand. The coastal district has the unique distinction of having a ‘moola mutt’ of one of the Ashta Mutts of Udupi Sri Krishna Temple at Pejawar, and the railway station there should be named as Pejawar station, Poojari had urged Goyal.

Pratap Singh Shami, divisional railway manager, Palakkad division, said Jokatte was the ideal name for the railway station, and that there was no need to change it. Asserting he was not aware of any demand to initially name or rename the station as Pejawar station since he assumed office, he said the station’s name will remain Jokatte. Incidentally, a vinyl name board at Jokatte stahad been torn up in March 2018.