‘Akshara Santa’ Harekala Hajabba meets CM Siddaramaiah, seeks PU college in hometown

BENGALURU: Padma Shri awardee Harekala Hajabba, popularly known ‘Akshara Santa’, met Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Saturday and submitted a memorandum seeking to upgrade the New Padpu Harekala government high school to a pre-university college, located in Mangaluru taluk.

At a time when there was no school facility for rural children at Harekala near Konaje, where Mangalore University is now located, Hajabba, who used to sell oranges in Mangalore’s Central Region State Bank Circle, built a school in his hometown with his own earnings.

Hajabba understood the importance of education when he could not answer a foreign woman in English while he was selling oranges. He put all his effort into opening a school for the children of his hometown and built a school after making the rounds of several offices barefoot. But his service to society did not get much publicity. He now hopes to start a college in Harekala and submitted a request to the CM today in this regard.