Monday 12 August 2013

Bad roads, overflowing drains wreak havoc in Old Bidar City

While copious rains have brought cheer for the farming community it has wreaked havoc in the lives of some residents in the Old Bidar City, thanks to bad roads and overflowing drains.
Take for instance the case of residents of Dalhan Darwaja Road behind the zilla panchayat office, Decent Function Hall, and Gawan Chowk. Every time there is a downpour, the drains overflow on the roads making it difficult for its users.“We have to wade through water to go out. Riding a two-wheeler in such situations is out of question,” said Mir Bidri, a resident of Faizpura lane.
Syed Firasat Ali, resident, says: “Water enters my house every alternate day when it rains. It has become a routine for us to flush out water.”
Some residents say a part of the problem is their own making.
A.Q. Khaleel, a retired employee who lives here, says, “Five years ago, the city municipal council demolished houses along the stretch from the ZP office to Ashtur village and the one connecting Gawan Chowk to Nizam Cross. The authorities said owners had encroached upon government land. Some people went to court and got a stay. So, whenever CMC took up road works, the two roads were left out. However, now that the stay on works on Gawan Chowk Road has been lifted, work has begun there”, he said.
Syed Riaz, Commissioner in-charge of the CMC, said repair and relaying of the two roads would be taken up in phases. These works have nothing to do with the cases. They are two different issues. The CMC is mandated to repair roads and drains across the city, he said.
more :http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/bad-roads-overflowing-drains-wreak-havoc-in-old-bidar-city/article5014149.ece

Thursday 18 July 2013

Bidar ZP approves Rs. 68.43-crore action plan.

The Bidar Zilla Panchayat approved an annual action plan of Rs. 68.43 crore in the general body meeting held here on Tuesday.
Latha Harkude, president, said: “the 150 gram panchayats and five taluk panchayats had approved action plans for a total of Rs. 71.5 crore this year.
Therefore, we are forwarding a request to the State government to release Rs. 140 crore for taking up development at the village, taluk and district levels.” Of the Rs. 140 crore,
Rs. 85 crore would be released as grants by the State government and the rest by the Union government.
Ujjwal Kumar Ghosh, chief executive officer, said the largest chunk of Rs. 32.48 crore was set aside for primary and secondary education, Rs. 8.37 crore will be spent on health and family welfare and Rs. 5.9 crore on community health programmes.
As much as Rs. 5.85 crore would be spent on women and child welfare and Rs. 1.63 crore on agriculture. Budget outlays have also been set for 18 other departments.
ZP members approved the plan after confirming that expenditure on all revenue circles would be similar.
More:http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/bidar-zp-approves-rs-6843crore-action-plan/article4922742.ece

Monday 17 June 2013

Monuments in Bijapur, Gulbarga, Bidar may get heritage site tag.








The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) may soon give the world heritage tag to monuments in Bijapur, Gulbarga and Bidar in Karnataka, and Golkonda in Hyderabad.
The State government and the Advisory Committee for World Heritage Matters have included monuments in these four places in the list to be submitted to the UNESCO, officials of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) said. The committee met recently in Chennai.
Proposal
“During the meeting, a proposal was made to include monuments built by Adil Shahis of Bijapur, Barid Shahi of Bidar, Bahmanis of Gulbarga and Qutub Shahi of Hyderabad in the list.
It will be a major step towards their preservation,” J. Ranganath, Assistant Superintending Archaeologist Engineer of the Dharwad Circle of the ASI, said.
He told The Hindu that a list of a cluster of monuments had been made as the new norms of the UNESCO did not allow recommendation of a single monument for the world heritage site tag. While Bidar had 40 protected monuments, Gulbarga had 12 and Bijapur 80.
Initially, the ASI prepared a tentative list of monuments and submitted it to the advisory committee, which would be forwarded to the UNESCO.
If the approval was granted, a complete dossier of monuments, city map and other details would be submitted to the UNESCO. Mr. Ranganath said that within a year, a list of monuments and basic documentation work would be submitted to the committee for further action.
More :http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/monuments-in-bijapur-gulbarga-bidar-may-get-heritage-site-tag/article4821642.ece

Thursday 9 May 2013

Final result of Constituency

Here are the winners,

Prabhu Chavan - Aurad - BJP
Mallikarjun Khuba - Bkalyan - JDS
Ishwar Khandre - Bhalki - INC
Rajshekhar Patil - Humnabad - INC
Bidar Urban - Gurupadappa Nagmarpalli - KJP
Bidar rural - Ashok Kheny - KMP

Tuesday 9 April 2013

KSRTC special buses for Ugadi holidays

The Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) will operate an additional 350 extra buses from April 10 to April 13 during the Ugadi holidays.
KSRTC, in a release, said that special buses will be operated from the Kempegowda Bus Station to Dharmasthala, Kukke Subrahmanya, Shimoga, Hassan, Mangalore, Kundapur, Sringeri, Horanad, Davangere, Hubli, Dharwad, Belgaum, Bijapur, Gokarna, Sirsi, Karwar, Raichur, Gulbarga, Bellary, Koppal, Yadgir, Bidar, Tirupati.
Special buses from the Mysore Road bus terminal will be operated towards Mysore, Hunsur, Piriyapatna, Virajpet, Kushalanagar and Madikeri.
All special buses to Madurai, Kumbakonam, Trichy, Chennai, Coimbatore, Tirupati, Vijayawada, Hyderabad and other places in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh will be operated from the Shanthinagar bus terminal.
Special buses will be operated from J.P. Nagar, Jayanagar 4th Block and 9th Block, Jalahalli Cross, Navarang Park (Rajajinagar), Malleswaram 18th Cross, Vijayanagar, Ganganagar, Banashankari, Yeshwanthapur and Kengeri Satellite Town to Shimoga, Davangere, Tirupati, Mangalore, Kundapur, Sringeri, Horanad, Kukke Subrahmanya, Dharmasthala and other places based on the traffic potential.
Passengers with advance reservation on special buses to Hubli, Dharwad, Belgaum, Bijapur, Gokarna, Sirsi, Karwar, Gulbarga, Bellary, Raichur, Hospet, Koppal, Yadgir and Bidar can board the buses at the Mysore Road bus terminal. 
more:http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/ksrtc-special-buses-for-ugadi-holidays/article4598918.ece

Bidar math was facing financial crisis, says official

Three persons, including a teenager, immolated themselves inside the Sri Ganeshwar Avadhoot Maharaj Math at Chowli village in Bidar taluk of Karnataka in the early hours of Monday. The village is about 7 km from Bidar.
Jagannath Swami (30), Eera Reddy Swami (45) and Pranav Swami (16) are believed to have sat on a mound of firewood and set fire to it after dousing it with kerosene around 4.30 a.m., the police said.
They were all followers of Lingayat pontiff Sri Ganeshwar Avadhoot Maharaj, who died on February 28, allegedly after consuming poison.
Inmates of the math alerted the police about the fire. “Loud cries woke them up. They saw flames and alerted our constables. They called the New Town police station and the Fire Services personnel,” said a police officer, who was present at the math.
Firefighters arrived within minutes and struggled for nearly an hour to put out the blaze, he said. “We started removing the firewood and noticed the bodies. Only then did we know of the suicide,” he added.
While the reasons for the death of the 55-year-old pontiff remain a mystery, the three left a note stating their reasons for committing suicide.
In the two-page, partly printed and partly handwritten note, they stated: “Unable to bear the pain of separation” they were “going to meet their departed guru.”
They also stated that they have “no relatives, friends or foes in this world.” They said their “Guru’s spirit had instructed them to come to him through the route of Agni.”
A police van was stationed outside the math premises after the pontiff’s death and the police personnel were sleeping in the math’s community hall when the incident occurred, the police said.
“The Avadhoot had spoken of suicide before he actually ended his life on February 28. Some devotees told us that he had spoken of a mass suicide along with his devotees,” the police said.“The firewood was stocked for the mass feeding to be organised on the math’s annual fair scheduled for April 11,” Shantappa, a devotee from Bhalki said.
Aravind Patil, a devotee from Humnabad, said Jagannath Swami was the one who oversaw the math’s daily affairs. The police have registered a case of unnatural death. They had matched the handwriting of Jagannath Swami from the math’s account books and correspondence with the suicide note and are sure it was written by him.

‘Successive governments have failed to develop Bidar’

residents of the district will vote to ensure a place for their representatives in the State Assembly, and either continue with the leaders they feel appropriate, or replace them with new ones; however, they still hold a very pessimistic view on some issues which have plagued the district for the last 65 years.
Several studies have placed Bidar on the list of backward districts; the D.M. Nanjundappa panel for one, which identified four of the five taluks in the district as being backward. According to the human development index in Karnataka, Bidar is among the five least developed districts in the State; while the Union government’s Ministry of Minority Welfare put Bidar among the 100 least developed districts in India.
These studies have offered various reasons for the district’s backwardness: the first is livelihood.
Nine out of every 10 persons in the district depend on farming. Three-fourths of them work as agricultural labourers, as per a study of the labour force. “This should have been addressed by setting up agro-based industries and inviting manufacturing or service industries into the district. Successive governments have failed to do so. They have also never focussed on irrigation in the district,” said Ishwarappa Chakote, member of the Zilla Abhivruddhi Horata Samiti.
The second reason: non -remunerative farming practices, such as low acreage of cash crops or horticultural crops. The lack of proper irrigation facilities also adds to the woes of farmers. The existing projects can provide water only to around 7 per cent of the farmland in the district, according to officials in the Water Resource Department.
Irrigation woes
“The biggest let-down is the failure of governments to expand irrigation facilities,” says Veerabhushan Nandagave, Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha leader. “Bidar is situated in the Godavari basin, and was accorded 21 tmcft of Godavari water by the Bachawat report; however, successive governments have not even considered this. Some leaders say we will build barrages across the Karanja and Manjra to utilise the allocation, but we have not heard anything concrete from the State government,” he said.
Khaji Arshed Ali, former MLC and editor of Bidar Ki Awaaz says the immediate focus should be education and health. “Most development schemes are focussed on building physical infrastructure. Few seem to think about human resource development, which is sad. Development does not mean having better roads or bridges. It means easy access to healthcare and education and better-paying jobs. Governments should focus on increasing the fundamentals, like literacy rates and basic healthcare and increased admission in higher education courses,” he said.
“Tourism development is another neglected area. Three of our taluks, Bidar, Basavakalyan and Humnabad have heritage sites and can be developed if the government works towards increasing tourist activity. Little has been done on this front till now,” says Shailendra Kavadi, president of the NGO Parisara Vahini.

Saturday 6 April 2013

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Thursday 14 March 2013

‘Upgrade road’ in bidar

Activist Gurunath Wadde has urged the State government to upgrade the Bidar-Aurad road to a double-lane road. The State is indifferent to the problems of Hyderabad Karnataka, he told presspersons here on Wednesday. The road is 5.5 metres wide from Bidar to Koutha; but from Koutha to Aurad, it is just 3.5 metres wide. It is an important road in the district as it connects a taluk headquarters to the district headquarters. A significant portion of the district’s total traffic passes through this road, he added. Mr. Wadde stated that he had approached the High Court in this matter, and it had directed the Public Works Department to improve the road. At least now the government should act, Mr. Wadde said.

more:http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/upgrade-road/article4506887.ece

Tuesday 19 February 2013

Road to be closed for a week.

Bidar, Zaheerabad and Hyderabad road will be closed for one week from March 17 to 24 in view of the repairs to the railway line at Metalkunta railway station gate number 33. Vehicle drivers are advised to take Allipur by-pass road, the Collector said in a release on Tuesday.

Saturday 16 February 2013

A Bidri dining table for the Mallya family

Vijay Mallya may be having problems with some of his companies, but it seems he believes in living life king size. Bidri artisans of Bidar are making a wall-mounted dining table, decked with silver all over, for the Mallya family.
National award-winning master craftsman Mohammad Rauf and his son Abdul Bari are working overnight to create a dining table with floral designs.
The table that looks like an ordinary table cut into half, has four legs. The straight end of the table would be fixed to a wall.
“Last month, some officials from the Kingfisher company came to Bidar looking for me. They wanted to see my designs. I made a free hand design and showed it to them. They liked it and asked me to deliver it within three weeks,” Mr. Rauf said.
“The officials had seen a table that I made earlier. Around 20 years ago, I designed a Bidri dining table, based on the picture of a wooden table from Iran. The table top was inlaid with mother-of-pearl pieces. I thought of doing the same with Bidri ware and produced an 18-inch table. We sold it to a collector in Mumbai. Someone from the company must have seen it and liked it,” he said.
He has not decided upon the price yet.
It depends upon the amount of silver that goes into it. Now we have used over 3.5 kg of silver. It should cost around Rs. 4 lakh, he said. As many as nine artisans are working on the table.
Rauf is a third generation Bidri artisan.
He is among the three master craftsmen identified by the Union Culture Ministry.
He created a memento for the Commonwealth Games and the Union government’s souvenirs at the world economic forum in Davos.

Thursday 17 January 2013

Cycle race in bidar

Additional Superintendent of Police B.S. Marthurkar will inaugurate a cycle race organised by the Rotary Club of Bidar here on January 20. The 10-km race will start from S.B. Patil Dental College at 7 a.m. Prizes are sponsored by TI cycles and Dilip Cycle Stores. Those interested in participating should register with Dilip Cycle Stores (08482-226451), according to a release by Sunil Kumar Prabha, club president. — Special Correspondent