'Gandhi Nadige' to be held in Karnataka on Oct 2 to spread awareness about cleanliness

Bengaluru: Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar on Saturday said the state government would organise ‘Gandhi Nadige’ (a walk), to mark the centenary of Mahatma Gandhi taking over as the President of the Indian National Congress session, on October 2, his birth anniversary.

The 39th session of the Indian National Congress held at Belagavi in 1924 was the only Congress session presided over by Mahatma Gandhi.

“We will be taking out 1km-long ‘Gandhi Nadige’ from Gandhi Bhavan to Gandhi statue near Vidhana Soudha at 9 am to mark the occasion. We will also take the cleanliness oath on the occasion,” Shivakumar said.

Similar programmes would be organised at taluk and district levels, he said, “We will invite political leaders cutting across party lines.” “We will be garlanding statues of Gandhi and Lal Bahadur Shastri on their birth anniversaries. We will administer the oath of cleanliness to 500 students through video conferencing at the Banquet Hall. This programme is aimed at creating awareness about Gandhi’s philosophy among youth,” he explained.

The Deputy CM said MLAs would participate at the taluk level programmes while district in charge ministers would participate in the district level events.

“We have appealed to everyone to wear white dress during ‘Gandhi Nadige’. We will be organising programmes throughout the year to spread Gandhi’s philosophy to the youth.” Noting that an app has been developed to help people take the oath of cleanliness, Shivakumar said, more than 35,000 people have registered on the app already. A certificate would be issued to all those who take the oath of cleanliness, he said.

Asked if the potholes in Bengaluru are filled, the Deputy CM said, “I won’t say all potholes are filled but the officials have worked at a record speed to fill potholes. I will conduct another round of inspection and I will talk about it in detail then.” Shivakumar, who is also the Minister in-charge of Bengaluru city development on September 1 had given a 15-day deadline to the city civic body Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) to fill up potholes across the city, citing a lot of complaints.