Bengaluru: On Monday, Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai stated that the state government’s position on border issues is extremely clear. He stated categorically that no part of our land will be ceded.
Bommai, speaking to the media after attending a ceremony hosted by the Maharashtra Social Welfare Department, stated that everytime the state faces a political crisis, lawmakers in Maharashtra bring up the border problem.
Bommai said, “There are many Kannada speaking areas in Maharashtra. The state government is mulling to take up their cause too. It is very mean on part of the Maharashtra politicians to raise the border and language issues for their political survival.”
After a video of some people pouring black ink on the face of a Shivaji statue on Sankey Tank Road in Bengaluru went viral in December last year, tensions erupted in Belagavi, a border area claimed by both Karnataka and Maharashtra.
Shiv Sena and Maharashtra Ekikiran Samiti (MES) supporters assembled in Belagavi and wrecked 27 Karnataka government vehicles in retaliation. The Sangolli Rayanna statue was also vandalised by some miscreants.
Maharashtra maintains that the Belagavi border district should be theirs. The Karnataka administration, on the other hand, remains steadfast in its attitude. Belagavi is part of Karnataka, according to the Mahajan Commission, but Maharashtra continues to dispute the commission’s findings and claims Belagavi, Khanapur, Karwar, Bidar, and other border areas as its own.
These regions were part of the erstwhile Bombay presidency, and later were added to Karnataka in the reorganisation exercise in 1956.
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