HDMC yet to get approval from govt to install them near Kargil Stupa.

Bronze busts of military commanders from Karnataka gather dust at HDMC office. DH photo

The bronze busts of three renowned military commanders from Karnataka carved for installing on the premises of the Kargil Stupa in Dharwad are gathering dust at the Hubballi-Dharwad Municipal Corporation (HDMC) zonal office for the past seven years.

In 2017, the HDMC decided to install 2.5-feet-high and 2-feet-wide bronze busts of Field Marshal K M Cariappa, General K S Thimayya, and General Gopal Gurunath Bewoor, along with a national emblem of similar size near the Kargil Stupa. The HDMC had sanctioned Rs 10 lakh for the creation of these statues. Artists from Mumbai sculpted and delivered the statues to the corporation. Thus the busts were readied as per the plan but they were not installed. 

According sources, the inauguration was initially scheduled for January 28, 2018. However, since government permission is mandatory for installing statues of prominent leaders in public spaces, the process got stalled. What’s more surprising is that even after all these years, no proposal has been sent to the state government to seek this approval, the sources said.

North Karnataka Soldiers’ Welfare Committee president Chandrashekhar Aminagad, who was instrumental in seeing up Kargil Stupa in memory of Kargil victory, expressed regret that despite approaching HDMC and urging elected representatives, there has been no progress on installing these statues.

“If the statues were not meant to be installed, why spend Rs 10 lakh of public money on them? Why are they lying idle in a zonal office? At the very least, could they not be temporarily placed at the deputy commissioner’s office to offer them some respect?” he questioned.

Aminagad pointed out that neither he nor the office-bearers of the committee are soldiers or ex-servicemen, but are patriots. It was in this spirit that India’s first Kargil memorial was established in Dharwad in 2002. Since then, several welfare programmes have been organised for serving and retired soldiers. Had the statues of these military commanders also been installed, the site would have gained historical significance. He expressed concern about when the state government would finally approve the installation.

Reacting to this, Mayor Jyoti Patil said that the installation of busts has been delayed due to the need approval from the state government. “Ideally, this approval should have been sought back in 2017. The matter will now be raised in the upcoming July general body meeting, and a letter will be sent to the state government so that the statues can be installed at the earliest,” the mayor said.

source: http://www.deccanherald.com / Deccan Herald / Home> India> Karnataka / by Srinidhi R / July 25th, 2025

Karnataka Revenue Minister Krishna Byre Gowda on Friday said that the construction of new Taluk Administration Buildings (Prajasaudha) in Ponnampet and Kushalnagar in Kodagu district will begin shortly.

He was speaking to media persons during his visit to the district. The Minister noted that though the two taluks were created more than 7 years ago, taluk offices have not yet been constructed, and said that the projects for the same would be expedited.

The government has sanctioned ₹8.65 crore each for the two buildings, and the tender process has been completed, he added.

Mr. Byre Gowda also inspected the proposed sites for the buildings and visited a bridge near Balyamandur. He said that the government was accelerating efforts to scan and digitally preserve original land ownership records across taluk offices to ensure landowners have guaranteed access to their documents.

“Preserving land records and making them accessible at the fingertips of landowners is the core objective of the Land Security Scheme,” said the Minister. The initiative aims to prevent loss, tampering, or forgery of land records, which often leads to disputes, he added.

With regard to digitisation of land records, the Minister said that the department has already scanned 33.5 crore pages of land records against the target of completing the scan of 100 crore pages of documents and records across Karnataka. This, he said, would serve as a legal guarantee for land records.

Mr. Byre Gowda emphasised the need for strict implementation of recent reforms in the Revenue Department and urged officials to adopt modern technology to deliver citizen services efficiently.

On the issue of recurring landslides in Kodagu, the Minister said that the government will allocate ₹50 crore for constructing retaining walls. The funds will be released soon by the Chief Minister, he added.

The Minister said full ownership rights would be extended to rightful landowners, and records dating back 30 to 40 years would be rectified where necessary, offering a long-term solution.

MLA for Virajpet A.S. Ponnanna apprised the Minister of rain damage in Kodagu district. Deputy Commissioner of Kodagu Venkat Raja, ZP CEO Anand Prakash Meena, and officials from PWD and various other departments were present.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> India> Karnataka / by The Hindu Bureau / July 25th, 2025

Writer Harini Nagendra’s newest instalment in the best-selling series, Bangalore Detectives Club, sees protagonist Kaveri solving mysteries across 1920s B’luru & the forests of Kodagu

The cover of Into The Leopard’s Den

An elderly woman lies bleeding out on the floor of her ramshackle hut – an intruder turning her home inside out in search of something she refuses to surrender. As this mysterious killer discovers the object and flees, she clutches a picture of Bengaluru’s famous female detective Kaveri. Thrusting it into the hands of a boy who discovers her, she breathes her last with a plea on her lips – find the killer.

Into the Leopard’s Den (`499; Hachette), the fourth volume of writer Harini Nagendra’s best-selling cosy mystery series, Bangalore Detectives Club, dives straight into the tangled knots of this mystery, with the now pregnant 21-year-old detective, Kaveri, determined to unravel them all.

This time, the case leads her to the lush coffee plantations of Kodagu, leaving her motley crew of inquisitive neighbour aunty Uma, street urchin Venu and housemaid Anandi to investigate in Bengaluru. “While staying in the house of coffee plantation owner Lakamma, she learns of stories of a ghost leopard terrorising the place and scaring the workers away. At the same time, an exploitative British plantation owner’s life is in danger from multiple attacks,” explains Nagendra.

As an ecologist, the author’s environmental concerns come to the forefront stronger than in the previous three instalments, addressing colonialism’s ecological destruction alongside the murder mystery. “You get an insight into the time – the British expanded coffee production into the forest a lot but at a huge cost – the exploitation of labour, but also an ecological cost to the landscape,” she explains.

The Bengaluru of a century ago comes alive in these pages as the reader is transported to places that are familiar yet different. Nagendra explains her fascination with the period, nestled between two world wars and intimately associated with detective fiction from Agatha Christie’s Poirot stories to Miss Marple, Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay’s popular Byomkesh Bakshi series, and more. “The 1920s were a very interesting period in Bengaluru because while the rest of India was actively involved in the independence struggle, the Mysore Maharajas had a mediating influence here. While most books about the period have focused on Bombay, Delhi, and Kolkata, I wanted to talk about what it was like to live in Bengaluru at the time.” she explains.

Nagendra also makes it a point to include real women from the time (such as journalist Kalyanamma) or characters inspired by real women, with Lakamma being based on ‘coffee pudi’ Sakamma, an influential businesswoman.

This, with Kaveri’s independent, intelligent, and headstrong character, turns stereotypes of women of this period on its head. “A feminist discussion runs through the entire series because Kaveri is very strongly what we would call a feminist in these times. There were also a lot of independent women stepping out of the house for the first time in the 1920s,” says Nagendra, adding that at the same time, many, like her mother, grandmother and mother-in-law, were denied higher education. For her, imagining a character like Kaveri is partly a way of setting history right.

Kaveri and her doctor husband Ramu’s relationship, from a newly-wed couple to expectant parents, is a sweet and heartwarming thread in the series. Nagendra reveals that this loving yet nuanced depiction of an Indian arranged-married couple was a deliberate decision, keeping both her local and global readership in mind.

“There is often a feeling that Indian relationships are exploitative, always involving subjugation. I wanted to write about a regular but happy marriage of those times,” says Nagendra, adding, “Ramu is a traditional man, raised in a traditional family, married to an independent woman whom he didn’t really understand very well. But he wants to be supportive and over time, he understands her better, I’ve been enjoying seeing their relationship grow.”

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Bengaluru / by Mahima Nagaraju / July 23rd, 2025