The Ballari district unit of the Hyderabad-Karnataka Horata Samiti launched a signature campaign here on Tuesday in support of the ongoing agitation at Raichur seeking an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT).
“It is the first phase of our agitation,” T.G. Vittal and S. Pannaraj, conveners of the samiti, told presspersons here.
They said signatures would be collected from students and people from a cross section of society during the weeklong campaign and forwarded to the Union Minister for Human Resource Development and the Chief Minister.
They said that Raichur was among the five districts in the Hyderabad-Karnatak region that had remained backward.
To redress the regional imbalance, the D.M. Nanjundappa committee had recommended setting up of the IIT in Raichur, besides other steps. In 2012, the BJP government headed by Jagadish Shettar wrote to the Union government recommending Raichur as the location for the IIT.
To mount pressure on the Union and State governments, the samiti would hold a protest demonstration on October 14.
