KALABURAGI: Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is all set to hold his second cabinet meeting in Kalaburagi on September 17, which is observed as Kalyana-Karnataka Liberation Day.
Siddaramaiah, who held his first cabinet meeting in Kalaburagi on November 28, 2014, decided to hold it again here on Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Minister Priyank Kharge’s request. Priyank is also minister in-charge of Kalaburagi district. Priyank has said that the cabinet meeting to be held in Kalaburagi will discuss and take decisions on welfare activities to be taken up in the Kalyana-Karnataka region.
The tradition of conducting cabinet meetings outside the state capital was started by R Gundu Rao, who held the first meeting in Kalaburagi in 1981 when he was CM. Eight cabinet meetings have been held in Kalaburagi since then. As CM, BS Yediyurappa held four cabinet meetings from 2008 to 2011 and Jagadish Shettar held one in 2012.
The cabinet meeting held here in 2014 by Siddaramaiah took several decisions, including filling nearly 50,000 vacant posts in various government departments in this backward region and completing the process of recruitment by the end of June 2015. But this decision has not been fully implemented.
Though the cabinet decided to provide sufficient grants for completion of irrigation projects in the region in all the meetings held here, work on most of them is yet to be completed. It was also decided to develop tourist spots in the region, but nothing has been done so far.
Yediyurappa’s cabinet decided to construct ‘Anubhava Mantapa’ in Basavakalyan in honour of 12th century social reformer Basavanna. But this project too has not been implemented.
The cabinet meetings held here in the past stressed the need to take steps to improve SSLC and II PU pass percentage in the region, but the region’s position remains the same. With this being the situation, people of the region hope that at least this cabinet meeting will help resolve their problems and meet their long-pending demands.