BENGALURU: In thousands of villages across the state, the dead have no final resting place. As many as 4,370 villages (close to 20 per cent of the total) in Karnataka do not have burial grounds. The State Government has now initiated steps to procure land for the purpose and is expected to finalise it by March-end.
At a recent meeting of district deputy commissioners and zilla panchayat chief executive officers, various issues including lack of space and lack of burial grounds in many villages across the state were discussed. As per the data available with TNIE, of the total 29,438 villages, 4,370 of them do not have burial grounds at all. Most of these villages are in Uttara Kannada, Shivamogga, Belagavi, Hassan, Chitradurga, Raichir and some are in Bagalkot, Kalaburagi, Yadgir, Gadag and Koppal.
On the other hand, only four villages in Dakshina Kannada, six in Chikkaballapur and eight in Bengaluru Rural district do not have burial grounds. Principal Secretary, Revenue Department, Tushar Girinath, said that in some villages, mainly in the Malnad region and Dakshina Kannada district, villagers used forest areas as burial ground. “In these places, the DCs will write to the Forest Department seeking handover of land to the Revenue Department and, in turn, they will be given alternate land,’’ he said.
“Other than this, wherever there is no land for burial sites, the State Government can make use of Gomala land or even purchase land from individual land holders,” he said. According to him, they are likely to get burial grounds for each village across the state by March-end. “We are hoping that once the land is procured, it will be developed and converted as burial grounds in the next one year,’’ he added.
Bengaluru city too is facing a shortage of crematoria for many years now as the civic agency has not made arrangements for new burial grounds, even though the city’s population increased manifold. During the Covid second wave, the district administration and BBMP set up makeshift crematoria in open grounds on the city’s outskits at Kurubarahalli (Bengaluru South), Giddanahalli (near Hosakote) and Bidaraguppe (near Anekal). However, these were shut after a decline in the number of deaths. Girinath said, “The same land will be used to put up permanent structures. We will provide all basic amenities here.’’
