10 Indian beaches including one in Udupi to be converted into global quality

coastaldigest.com news network
January 29, 2018

Udupi, Jan 29: The Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change plans to convert India’s 10 popular sea beaches into international quality Blue Flag destination in 2018 to ensure cleanliness and safety of these beaches. Among the 10 beaches, Padukere Beach located near Malpe in Karnataka’s Udupi district has been listed on the Blue Flag list.

Welcoming the move, Karnataka tourism Director Manjula said that her department already had listed Padukere beach as it fits into most of 33 categories listed by the ministry to select.

All the coastal states have nominated the pilot beaches. Formal nominations are, however, awaited from Union territories like Daman and Diu, Puducherry, Lakshadweep and Andaman and Nicobar islands. Sources said that Andaman would be the only place from where two beaches might be selected for the Blue Flag certification.

These ten beaches are being taken up as demonstration projects. Once they are cleaned up, 90 more beaches would be turned into Blue Flag zones.

The Blue Flag is a certification by the Foundation for Environmental Education to ensure following a set of stringent standards to clean up the popular seaside destinations.

None of the Indian beaches carry this certification, while Spain has 578 Blue Flag beaches. Other countries with a large number of Blue Flag beaches are Turkey (436), Greece (395), Italy (342) and Portugal (299).

The developmental activities along the beach would include the creation of toilets and proper management of the waste material generated by tourists.

According to the existing Coastal Regulatory Zone (CRZ) regulations, developmental activities are permitted in CRZ-2 (urban) and CRZ-3 (rural) areas. However, construction is prohibited in the CRZ-1 areas, which is they are between the high tide line and low tide line along the 7,500 km coastline.

International tourists

Pramod Madhwaraj, Karnataka Minister for Fisheries, Youth Empowerment and Sports, and Udupi district in-charge said that getting the certification would help in attracting international tourists to the beach.

An amount of Rs. 69 lakh had been spent to improve the road connectivity to Padukere. The construction of toilets and gazebos would be taken up at Padukere beach.

The beach facing the Arabian Sea, separated from Malpe fisheries harbour by the Udyavara rivulet, had now got road connectivity from Malpe. Hence efforts were being made to develop both the beaches.

A large number of youth in Malpe were dependent on fisheries. But tourism was a growing sector. The objective was also to create employment opportunities in the tourism sector.

The Malpe beach, the St. Mary’s Island (about 6.5 km from Malpe) and the Padukere beach along with the Sea Walkway will attract more tourists here and facilitate the development of tourism, Mr. Madhwaraj said.

Also Read: Karnataka’s first Sea Walkway opens to public at Malpe

Comments

Hari
 - 
Monday, 29 Jan 2018

What were the criterias for selecteing pilot beaches? Is that most polluted beaches? They will expand to all beaches in Karnataka?

Kumar
 - 
Monday, 29 Jan 2018

Great project. People also should cooperate to this project. Without them proper implementation wont happen

Ganesh
 - 
Monday, 29 Jan 2018

Great news. It will give more mileage to beach tourism in Karnataka

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News Network
March 25,2020

Bengaluru, Mar 25 : Karnataka recorded its highest single-day tally to date, as 10 people tested positive, taking the total number of cases to 51 in the state.

“Till date 51 COVID-19 positive cases have been confirmed in the state which includes one death and three discharged," the health department said in a statement on Wednesday.

The rise in cases adding to the growing national tally of people who have tested positive for COVID-19.

The daughter of a former union minister from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from Karnataka has also tested positive.

Bengaluru accounts for 32 of the total 51 cases recorded in the state so far,including three who have fully recovered and released.

Dakshina Kannada has five confirmed cases, Chikkaballapura and Kalaburagi has three cases each, Mysuru has and Uttara Kannada has two cases each and four other districts have one case each.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced a 21-day lockdown of the country to keep people indoors and contain the spread of the virus in the community.

The government has also been trying to scale up testing.

Medical education minister K.Sudhakar on Wednesday told Mint that Karnataka will scale up testing by 10-fold with the help of government and private labs approved by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

A total of 2,438 people have been tested in Karnataka and 2242 have tested negative, according to state health department. 214 people are lodged in medical hospitals.

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News Network
July 21,2020

Bengaluru, Jul 21: The total number of Covid-19 cases in Karnataka breached the 70,000 mark on Tuesday as the state reported 3,649 fresh infections, while 61 fatalities took the death toll to 1,464, the health department said.

The day also saw 1,664 patients getting discharged after recovery. Out of 3,649 fresh cases reported on Tuesday, a whopping 1,714 were from Bengaluru urban alone. As of July 21 evening, cumulatively 71,069 Covid-19 cases have been confirmed in Karnataka, which includes 1,464 deaths and 25,459 discharges, the health department said in its bulletin.

It said that out of the 44,140 active cases, 43,557 patients are in isolation at designated hospitals and are stable, while 583 are in Intensive Care Units.

Twenty-two out of 61 deaths reported on Tuesday are from Bengaluru urban, followed by five each from Dakshina Kannada, Mysuru and Dharwad, four each from Kolar and Belagavi, three each from Hassan, Tumakuru and Haveri, Bidar 2, and one each from Chikkaballapura, Chikkamagaluru, Chamarajanagara, Gadag and Vijayapura.

Most of the deceased either had a history of Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI) or Influenza-like illness (ILI). Out of 3,649 cases tested positive on Tuesday, contacts of the large number of the cases are still under tracing.

Among the districts where new cases were reported, Bengaluru urban accounted for 1,714, Ballari 193, Dakshina Kannada 149, Mysuru 135, Yadgir 117, Uttara Kannada 109, Hassan 107, Kolar 103, followed by others.

Bengaluru urban district topped the list of positive cases, with 34,943 infections, followed by Dakshina Kannada 3,829 and Kalaburagi 2,966. Among discharges Bengaluru urban was on top with 7,476 discharges, followed by Kalabuagi 1,834 and Udupi 1,731.

A total of 10,64,734 samples were tested so far, out of which 43,904 were tested on Tuesday alone, the bulletin said. It said that 19,328 of the 43,904 samples tested today were rapid antigen tests.

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coastaldigest.com news network
May 20,2020

Mangaluru, May 20: The local unit of Bharatiya Janata Party has defended the delay in repatriation of coastal Kannadigas from Middle Eastern countries saying that it is impossible to bring all expatriate together at a time when covid-19 cases are continuing to spike in the region. 

Addressing a press conference, Sudarshan M, president of Dakshina Kannada unit of BJP said that the entire district administration was working as a team under the leadership local MP Nalin Kumar Kateel and district minister Kota Shrinivas Poojary and seven BJP MLAs in this critical juncture.

“Without any bias, we also have reached out to the needs of people of Mangaluru assembly constituency represented by former minister and Congress MLA U T Khader,” he said, adding that his party will not forget Indian expatriates in the Gulf too. 

Replying to the charge of not catering to the interests of Kannadigas stranded in the Middle East by way of arranging special flights, Sudarshan said this is part of a well-thought-out move to bring them in batches.

“It is impossible to bring back all Kannadigas stranded in Middle East all of a sudden. Their repatriation will be in phased manner based on facilities available in the district,” he said.

“The district authorities have created healthcare and quarantine facilities for a limited number, be it at Covid-19 hospital or institutional quarantine, and bringing them together will create logistical problems,” he said.

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