Ballari

Ballari or Bellary, in the eponymous Ballari district, is a city in the state of Karnataka, India. History of Bellary Ballari was a part of Rayalaseema (Ceded Districts) which was part of Madras Presidency till 1 November 1956. The Ballari city municipal council was upgraded to a city corporation in 2004. The Union Ministry of Home Affairs of the Government of India approved a proposal to rename the city in October 2014 and Ballari was renamed to "Ballari" on 1 November 2014. Ballari is located at . The city stands in the midst of a wide, level plain of black cotton soil. Granite rocks and hills form a prominent feature of Ballari. The city is spread mainly around two hills of granite composition, the Ballari Hill and the Kumbara Gudda. Ballari Hill has a circumference of nearly and a height of . The length of this rock from north-east to south-west is about . To the east and south lies an irregular heap of boulders, to the west there is an unbroken monolith, and the north is walled by bare, rugged ridges. Kumbara Gudda looks like the profile of a human face from the south-east. It is also known as Face Hill. According to the 2011 Census of India, the urban population of Ballari was 410,445; of whom 206,149 were male and 204,296 female. 280,610 of the population were literate and 52,413 of the population were under 7 years of age. The population in 2001 was recorded as 316,766. Both Kannada (36.25%) and Telugu (28.06%) are the predominant languages, Kannada is the official language, Urdu (25.78%) is also widely spoken. While, Marwari (3.01%), Marathi (1.82%), Tamil (1.74%), Hindi (1.23%), Malayalam (1.08%) are also spoken. Cotton processing With cotton being one of the major agricultural crops around Ballari historically, the city has had a thriving cotton processing industry in the form of ginning, spinning and weaving plants. The earliest steam cotton-spinning mill was established in 1894, which by 1901 had 17,800 spindles, and employed 520 hands.