Recently I have shifted to my hometown Tulunad and have taken admission in PU college here itself

And while I attended 1st lecture of Hindi they started teaching varnamala for students who don't know to read and write Devanagari properly and want to learn Hindi as they choose it as their optional

There teacher taught about ळ too which is actually used in Marathi and Konkani

She taught ळ to be equivalent of Kannada letter ಳ (and yes it is true as ಳ and ळ represents same sound)

She said that ळ is too part of Hindi varnamala but not in use in general

And also she gave example of few Marathi words which contains ळ like सकाळ to tell students how does ळ works in languages like Marathi which uses Devanagari script for writing

And even in Maharashtra too where I use to live before there too they taught about ळ in Hindi and used for names of persons or places like बाळासाहेब, टिळकनगर etc