Congress MLAs in Karnataka, led by the Leader of Opposition Siddaramaiah, on Monday held protests after a portrait of Hindutva ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was unveiled in the Legislative Assembly at the Suvarna Vidhana Soudha in the Belagavi city, Times of India reported.
As the 10-day winter session of the Karnataka Assembly started on Monday, Opposition leaders, including Siddaramaiah, sat outside the Assembly to oppose the installation of Savarkar’s portrait.
Assembly Speaker Vishweshwar Hegde Kageri and Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai also unveiled the portraits of Swami Vivekananda, Subash Chandra Bose, BR Ambedkar, Basaveshwara, Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, reported PTI.
“The speaker has unilaterally taken a decision to put up Veer Savarkar’s portrait,” said Siddaramaiah. “It is our demand to put portraits of all national leaders and social reformers [in the Karnataka Assembly hall.”
The former chief minister also said that if any portrait has to be put inside the Assembly, the legislators need to be taken into confidence since it becomes the property of the House, reported PTI.
Karnataka Congress leader DK Shivakumar accused the Bharatiya Janata Party-led state government of trying to disrupt proceedings through such steps. “They know we are going to raise issues of corruption in the session so they are trying to cause trouble by putting up the Savarkar portrait without consulting the opposition,” he said.
Karnataka-Maharashtra border row
Monday’s Winter Session of the Karnataka Legislature started amid the state’s border dispute with Maharashtra. Belagavi is among the border areas that Maharashtra has laid claim on.
Karnataka has been holding one Assembly session every year at Belagavi since 2006.
A decades-old border dispute between Karnataka and Maharashtra flared up in recent weeks on account of controversial remarks by political leaders in both states.
Since its creation on May 1, 1960, Maharashtra has demanded that 865 villages, including Belgaum (now Belagavi), Karwar and Nippani, that are currently in Karnataka, should be merged with it. Karnataka, however, claims that the demarcation that was carried out on linguistic lines in 1956 is final.
The Supreme Court is hearing a plea by the Maharashtra government on the border dispute.
The Assembly session began five days after Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that the Karnataka and Maharashtra governments will not make any claim in the border dispute until the Supreme Court gives its verdict in the case. Shah had made the statement after meeting the chief ministers of the two states.
Security has been tightened in Belagavi in view of the possibility of protests in connection with the border dispute. Nearly 5,000 police personnel, including six superintendents of police, have been deployed in the districts, The Indian Express reported, citing unidentified police officials.
The Belagavi administration has banned Maharashtra MP Dhairyasheel Mane from entering the district. He had sought permission to take part in a protest by the Madhyavarti Maharashtra Ekikaran Samiti, an organisation that has been seeking the merger of more than 800 border villages with Maharashtra.
Some leaders intentionally vitiating atmosphere: Fadnavis
Meanwhile, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Sunday cited an intelligence report to claim that demands made by some villages on the state border for a merger with neighbouring states was part of a design and that members of some political parties were involved in it, PTI reported.
He said that some political leaders in Maharashtra were intentionally vitiating the atmosphere in the state.
“As per the intelligence report which indicates that all these demands for a merger with other neighbouring states were part of a design, and some said we want to merge with Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh,” the Bharatiya Janata Party leader alleged. “The government has all the information of office-bearers of the political party who did this.”
Fadnavis said that the government will present the information before the Assembly at an appropriate time, according to PTI.
“On the one hand, in other states, all parties are coming together and raising the issue of the border dispute,” he said. “Here, office-bearers of some political parties are doing lowly politics by holding meetings and bringing up proposals that we [villages] have to merge with other states.”
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