Hubli The border dispute between Karnataka and Maharashtra is going to come up for hearing in the Supreme Court of India on September 23, news agency ANI quoted Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai as saying on Sunday. The Karnataka CM further informed that senior and experienced lawyers will be deputed in the state’s legal team to argue the border dispute with Maharashtra in the Supreme Court.
Bommai told reporters at the airport here, “The Supreme Court will hear the border dispute between Karnataka and Maharashtra on November 23. Senior and an experienced legal team will be appointed to effectively argue on behalf of Karnataka.”
The Chief Minister said that the issue has been discussed with the Advocate General and a study has been done.
On the Karnataka High Court order to consider CET (Common Entrance Test) marks for admission to professional courses, Bommai said the Advocate General has been directed to study the order and submit a report. The decision on filing an appeal in the apex court will be taken after consultation with legal experts.
The Karnataka-Maharashtra border issue has been a fiery conflict that has resorted to unrelenting strikes by both sides.
What is the Karnataka-Maharashtra boundary line?
The conflict began in the 1940s when the Belagavi municipality in present-day Karnataka, home to a significant Marathi-speaking population, requested that they be included in Maharashtra. Notably, Belagavi, Vijayapura, Dharwad and parts of Uttara Kannada were part of the then Bombay Presidency.
However, the States Reorganization Act, 1956 incorporated Belgaum in Mysore State and 10 talukas of Bombay State, which was renamed ‘Karnataka’ in 1973.
The commission added areas with more than 50% Kannada speaking population in the state of Mysore, which later came to be known as Karnataka. This decision led to the annexation of Belagavi and some other disinterested districts from the erstwhile Bombay Presidency into the state of Mysore.
– Political leaders of Maharashtra, among them Bombay State, had approached the Central Government to reconsider what they thought was a flawed demarcation and demanded Belagavi and other Marathi-speaking areas in Bombay State.
This dispute led to the formation of the Mahajan Commission in 1966 under the leadership of the retired Chief Justice of India, Meher Chand Mahajan. The commission was created to re-evaluate the demands and come up with a solution.
The commission published a report in 1967 in which it recommended that 264 villages be shifted to Maharashtra, while Belagavi, Nippani and 247 villages should remain in Karnataka. Karnataka welcomed the report, Maharashtra rejected it.
Maharashtra claims that there are 800 Marathi speaking villages in Karnataka, including Belgaum, Karwar and Nippani.
– In 2021, former Shiv Sena Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray has said, “We have to learn from past experiences and fight to win. Marathi speaking areas occupied by Karnataka will be included in Maharashtra,” Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray said recently. I emphasized.
Successive governments in Maharashtra have continued to lay claim to these territories, the issue the state approached the Supreme Court in 2004.
Thackeray had named ministers Chhagan Bhujbal and Eknath Shinde as coordinators to oversee the efforts of his government to expedite the matter relating to the border dispute with Karnataka.
In order to substantiate the fact that Belagavi and other regions are an integral part of Karnataka, the state government started construction of Suvarna Vidhana Soudha based on Vidhana Soudha in Bengaluru in 2007. The building was inaugurated in 2012 and a legislature session is held there once a year.
However, with the MVA government leaving and Eknath Shinde now as the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, the Marathi side of the legal battle seems to be weakening. Notably, Uddhav was the only CM who extended Maharashtra’s legal time to claim several areas along the Karnataka border in the Supreme Court.
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