Mutlupadi: Village in Udupi district with no mobile telephony tower

Team Udayavani, Jan 17, 2021, 12:52 PM IST

Ajekaru: Mobile telephony network is extremely important in the present world. However, at Mutlupadi village in Udupi district, there are no towers for mobile telecommunications.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had implemented many projects under the Digital India programme. However, the programme could not be brought to the village for myriad reasons.

No mobile telecommunications tower has been built, in the village by any other private telecom company, including government-owned BSNL.

Internet is useful for many things including online banking, online education, work front home. There are government apps too for many of its programs and schemes including for drinking water. However, the residents of Mutlupadi are deprived of it.

The village has about 200 houses with a population of about 1100. There are about 25 fixed landline telephones here but none of them are working properly.

The students of Mutlupadi were greatly troubled when the government started online courses for students due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Students had to go to the Borgal Kunja hill, about 5 km from the village, to attend their online classes under a tent in the hill’s forest.

The villagers say that requests to the government, department officials and elected representatives to build a mobile telecommunications tower in the village was of no avail.

Phone calls to any villager here respond as ‘not reachable.’ Villagers can only respond to calls if they come to the Muniyalu market about 5 km away.

Being a Naxal-affected village, it is difficult to respond instantly to any incident due to the mobile network issue.

“There is a network problem in the village so online education has become a burden. To be in the range of the network we have to climb a dangerous hill within the forest near the village. Students need to take elders with them to go up the hill because of fear of wild animals,” said Deeksha Shetty, a student.

There was no response to build a mobile telecommunications tower at Mutlupadi to solve its network coverage problem. Due to this online education and work is hampered. A tower must be built immediately,” Raghunath, gram panchayat member from Mutlupadi.

“Local legislators have already discussed with relevant authorities and have suggested appropriate action,” said Jyoti Harish, member of the zilla panchayat.