Karnataka Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar spent about three hours hearing public grievances at a Prajaseve campaign organised by the district administration at the Piriyapatna taluk stadium in Mysuru district on Saturday, with applications covering revenue, rural development and urban development issues.
Residents from Piriyapatna, Hunsur and surrounding areas submitted petitions during the programme. Shivakumar personally received applications from 2pm, taking a 15-minute lunch break before continuing the grievance hearing. In some cases, he directed officials to take immediate action, while other applicants were assured that their complaints would be examined.
The Chief Minister said a separate legal assistance centre had been established at the campaign for cases linked to courts. He said legal services would be provided free of cost when applicants faced difficulties related to legal procedures. The centre involved legal assistance personnel from the taluk-level system, according to his remarks.
Shivakumar said the Prajaseve campaign had been conducted at 620 locations since the department was launched on September 5, with more than one lakh people submitting applications. He identified the revenue, rural development and urban development departments as the areas receiving the largest number of petitions.
He said the campaign was intended to take ministers, legislators and officials closer to residents and that the programme should eventually be conducted at the gram panchayat level. He also said officials had been instructed to visit residents and hear their problems even when elected representatives were not present.
Housing-site demand was among the issues raised in the Chief Minister’s address. He said district commissioners had been asked to identify government land for people without residential sites. If government land was unavailable, he said, instructions had been issued to develop new layouts on private land. The government had decided to provide sites to five lakh economically vulnerable people in the first phase, he said, without specifying a district-wise allocation or timeline at the programme.
Shivakumar also said that raising the income limit for pension eligibility to Rs 1.20 lakh had benefited 12 lakh people. He said complaints about possible misuse of the Gruha Jyothi and Gruha Lakshmi schemes had led to a review of their implementation.
Other announcements included a special programme to develop cremation grounds in villages under the Muktidhama scheme. He urged residents not to encroach on forest areas and said unlicensed firearms should be surrendered by November 1. He added that guidance would be provided for disposing of legally valid applications, including those related to Bagair Hukum land claims, and said officials had been instructed not to evict people without due process.
The programme was attended by ministers Eshwar Khandre and Dr Yathindra Siddaramaiah, along with MLA K. Venkatesh and other officials. The next stage of the campaign, according to the Chief Minister, is its expansion from taluk-level programmes to gram panchayat-level grievance hearings.
