BELAGAVI
Veteran Congress leader and former Karnataka minister R V Deshpande who was re-elected from Haliyal constituency has close ties to Goa.
Deshpande, who speaks fluent Konkani, has a close connect with the Kannadiga community in Goa. He is also likely to take up the long pending 86-km Khanapur-Anmod stretch of the NH4A. Work on the stretch is likely to restart soon.
During his tenure as Karnataka tourism minister, R V Deshpande met then Goa chief minister Laxmikant Parsekar to initiate measures to rehabilitate Kannadigas living at Vasco.
When illegal structures of Kannadigas at Baina were razed in 2015, Deshpande, who was also Uttara Kannada District in-charge minister, had met the then CM Parsekar over demands to rehabilitate the Kannadigas living along Baina beach for many decades.
As tourism minister, Deshpande had also been mindful of the difficulties faced by Goan motorists in making sense of Kannada signboards at tourism places on the roads in Karnataka, which connected to Goa. He had directed his department to place these signboards in English for the convenience of Goan visitors.
