MANGALURU: Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Friday indicated that an office of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) may come up in Mangaluru. Talking to reporters in Udupi, Bommai said that the Home Minister has already held two meetings in this regard. “In the coming days, the Home Minister will visit the coastal city and review the situation.
Later, we will sit together and take a decision. Some matters cannot be revealed, but we will take necessary steps in the future in this regard,” he said. The CM visited Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts to review the Covid-19 situation and headed back to Bengaluru on Friday.
Several right wing outfits, including the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal, have been demanding a NIA office in Mangaluru to counter ‘terror activities’. A few days ago, an youth from Ullal near Mangaluru was arrested in connection with a terror funding case by the NIA sleuths. Right wing groups had protested in front of the house of the arrested youth, who is a grandson of a former MLA. They had also tried to gherao the house and stressed on the need for a NIA office in the city.
In 2017, former CM BS Yediyurappa had promised to open a NIA office in Mangaluru within three months of coming to power, claiming that Dakshina Kannada was a sensitive district. He had also requested the Union Home ministry to open a NIA office in Mangaluru to investigate political killings.
Udupi-Chikkamagaluru MP Shobha Karandlaje too had written to the Union Home ministry on the issue. Bengaluru Central MP P C Mohan too had sought setting up of a NIA office considering the sensitivity of the coastal region in Karnataka, the repeated violent protests in Mangaluru and an incident of a live bomb being found at Mangalore International Airport.
However, in a written reply to P C Mohan in 2020, the then Minister of State for Home, G Kishan Reddy, had said that they have no such plans since Karnataka comes under the jurisdiction of NIA’s Hyderabad branch office and the agency has a camp office at Bengaluru which also covers Mangaluru.