Nationalist Congress Party leader Jayant Patil said in the Maharashtra Assembly on Tuesday that Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai must be “answered in his own language” while discussing the tensions along the border between the two states.
The winter session of the Maharashtra Assembly began in Nagpur on Tuesday amid a flare-up of a decades-old border dispute of the state with Karnataka.
Patil, who is the leader of the NCP’s legislative party, said in the House that the Karnataka government had ensured that no political leaders from Maharashtra could attend a meeting of Marathi-speaking citizens in the border areas on Monday. He also said that when Nationalist Congress Party legislator and former state minister Hasan Mushrif went to the Belagavi district to meet Marathi-speaking citizens, a baton was raised at him, and remarked that this was extremely wrong.
“Marathi citizens in the border areas are being subjected to surveillance,” Patil claimed. “Marathi citizens are intentionally being harassed. We must seek answers about this. We must answer the Karnataka chief minister in his own language.”
The Nationalist Congress Party leader said that if required, attempts should be made to raise the height of dams in the districts bordering Karnataka. “Do not allow any attempt to hold Maharashtra hostage,” he told the Eknath Shinde-led state government.
Meanwhile, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader and former state minister Aaditya Thackeray claimed that Chief Minister Shinde did not want to speak about the dispute because he was scared, ANI reported.
“We want a discussion on the Karnataka-Maharashtra border issue in State Assembly,” Thackeray said. “We want to know what Maharashtra chief minister said in the meeting held in Delhi. Karnataka chief minister is aggressive on this issue but our chief minister does not want to talk about it due to fear.”
Responding to the Opposition, Shinde said that for the first time, the Union government had intervened in the matter, which was a positive step, PTI reported.
On December 5, Bommai had urged Shinde not to send his Cabinet colleagues to Belagavi, saying that their visit could disturb law and order. Maharashtra ministers Chandrakant Patil and Shambhuraj Desai were slated to meet activists from the Maharashtra Ekikaran Samiti, an organisation that has been seeking the merger of about 800 villages with Maharashtra, on December 6.
The ministers cancelled the visit citing BR Ambedkar’s death anniversary.
The dispute between the two states pertains to Maharashtra’s demand since its creation on May 1, 1960, that 865 villages, including Belgaum (now Belagavi), Karwar and Nippani, that are currently in Karnataka, should be merged with it. Karnataka, however, claims the demarcation that was carried out on linguistic lines in 1956 is final. The case is pending before the Supreme Court.
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