. The proposal will be kept before the state legislature in the winter session in Nagpur on December 19.){kind=link}
Maharashtra-Karnataka’s decades-old border dispute is back in the limelight as both states have reached a stalemate yet again. Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde has proposed a resolution that would benefit the Marathi-speaking people in Karnataka’s Belgavi(the disputed border area). The proposal will be kept before the state legislature in the winter session in Nagpur on December 19.
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States Reorganisation Act, 1956
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The border fracas has existed since 1956 when the country was organised along linguistic lines. This was to be done by an Act of parliament, the State Reorganisation Act, of 1956.
The Act created the post-independent Maharashtra state on May 1, 1960, and demarcated its separate and unique existence from its neighbours.
But the states’ reorganisation is a complex matter, especially when people who inhabit the border areas can identify with the language and customs of either state. And when such people are called a part of another state, from whom they don’t share their language, then this can cause tensions between the two states. In this scenario, either one of the states might feel slighted. And this slight now rests with Maharashtra.
The genesis of the problem
Since its inception on the 1st of May 1960, Maharashtra has resolutely claimed that 865 villages that include the contentious Belgavi(known formerly as Belgaum), Carver, and Nipani be a part of Maharashtra. The villages since the States Reorganisation Act, are now on the Karnataka side of the border.
The Bombay presidency included the districts of Belgavi, Dharwad, and Vijapura, and Uttar Kannada. These districts fall within the Karnataka border.
Before the States Reorganisation Act in 1956, the Belgaum district, in 1948, had requested to be placed within the present-day Maharashtra state on the grounds that it has a significant Marathi-speaking population. But the 1956 Act placed it with Karnataka(then Mysore) and also 10 other districts that contained a majority of Marathi speakers.What about the majority?
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The Act of 1956 sought to include districts with more than 50% of Kannada-speaking people with Mysore, but the disaffected held, and still continue to hold, that the districts were given to Karnataka despite the region having a majority of Marath-speaking people as opposed to the perception of 1956 Act’s- the region having a majority of Kannada-speaking people.
A year after the Act, in September 1957, Maharashtra lodged a complaint with the Union government over the demarcated boundaries.
The Centre over Mahrashtra’s protests constituted the Mahajan commission to look into the matter. The commission headed by former Chief Justice Mehr Chand Mahajan submitted its report in August 1967.
The report proposed the division of 511 villages between Maharashtra and Mysore. Of the 511, 264 were to be transferred to Maharashtra, and the remaining 247 were to remain with Mysore.
Maharashtra rejected the proposal and Mysore welcomed it. And since the issue remains contentious between the two states.
In recent memory
In 2004, the Maharashtra government under the leadership of Vilasrao Deshmukh moved the Supreme court for the settlement of the dispute. Maharashtra sees its right to include over 814 villages along the disputed area as these villages are a Marathi-speaking majority.
The argument of the Maharashtra government is based on similar lines to the 1956 Act which demarcated districts based on linguistic grounds. The government’s argument is also based on the reasoning that the area is home to a majority of Marathi speakers. Both provisions were placed within the rationale of the demarcation of states’ boundaries in the States Reorganisation Act of 1956.
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The dispute today
The previous government under Uddhav Thackeray had appointed ministers Eknath Shinde and Chaggan Bhujbal to oversee a speedy resolution to the decade-old pending case.
Tensions flared up in the border areas as pro-Kannda organisations staged a protest by burning the effigies of the then CM Thackeray and Shiv Sena responded in the same manner by burning the CM of Karnataka, Yeddyurappa’s effigy.
The present government under Eknath Shinde had tasked ministers, Chandrakant Patil and Shambhuraj Desai, to oversee the matter.
Shinde further announced the pension and medical care benefits to Marathi-speaking people in the disputed region. Karnataka CM on the other hand extended the grants to Kannda schools in Maharashtra and spoke of laying claim to 40 villages in Maharashtra’s Sangli district.
The announcement irked the current Maharashtra government and deputy CM, Devendra Fadanavis, dismissed Bommai’s claim and reiterated Maharashtra’s stand over the 865 villages.
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