MP Pratap Simha at CII-Yi Annual Entrepreneurship Summit

Mysuru: A Passport Seva Kendra (PSK) will be opened at Mandya very soon, said MP Pratap Simha.

He was participating in the Annual Entrepreneurship Summit Mysuru 2.0 organised by Confederation of Indian Industry – Young Indians (CII-Yi) at Hotel Radisson Blu here yesterday and said that opening of PSK in Mandya will help the people in district a lot just like for the people in Chamarajanagar where a PSK was opened recently.

Dwelling at length on the work he has done as a Parliamentarian, Simha said, “Before I became an MP, the work on the Ring Road was half complete and I completed it. Now, Rs.177 crore has been sanctioned and including asphalting, the Ring Road is being developed.”

Journalists and politicians must be well-versed in all the subjects and the reason is because the former has to attend all kinds of functions. Similarly, politicians have to speak on all kinds of subjects. Hence, both should be aware of all kinds of happenings. Only then can one respond to the issues plaguing the society, he said.

NICE Road work stalled: A ten-lane National Highway is being built between Mysuru and Bengaluru and the work is likely to be completed by 2021. Work on the 53-km bypass in Srirangapatna, Mandya, Maddur, Channapatna, Ramanagaram and Bidadi is going on. The Centre has sanctioned Rs.3,000 crore for land acquisition and farmers are getting very good price for the land. Hence, the acquisition process is going on smoothly, he said.

When H.D. Deve Gowda was the Chief Minister, he had promised to build the Mysuru-Bengaluru NICE Road Expressway corridor. However, even after 25 years, the work is incomplete, he said. “Before BJP announced my name for the Mysuru-Kodgau Lok Sabha constituency, the political parties did not know who I was. Just like politics, Mysuru was also new to me. If I had to visit a village, I used the Google Map to locate it. There are 12 Engineering Colleges in Mysuru, 85 degree colleges and there is ample scope for tourism. Even then why jobs are not available, people ask me. The main reason for this, I realised is connectivity. Everyday 36,000 vehicles ply between Mysuru-Bengaluru resulting in traffic jams. Hence, to attend to all these problems, I chalked out a few programmes to address these issues and focused on rail, road and air connectivity,” he said.

Daily flights to Kochi, Hyderabad: Though the Mandakalli Airport in Mysuru started operations in 2007, till 2014 there were hardly any flights. After I became MP, I gave stress on air service. Now there is 90 percent occupancy in the daily flights to Chennai. Shortly, we will be connecting to eight different cities, including Goa, Hyderabad, Kochi, Belagavi and eight aircraft will fly out of the city daily. In another three years, 25 aircraft will fly out of Mysuru daily. The runway will also be extended and below that will be the underpass, the first of its kind in Asia. Rs.430 crore has been released for this work. – Pratap Simha, MP

CII Mysuru Vice-Chairman Bhaskar Kalale, Yi Mysuru Chapter Chair D. Ravi Shankar, Co-Chair Ghanashyam Murali and others were present.